{"id":25032,"date":"2026-09-16T14:25:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=25032"},"modified":"2026-09-16T14:25:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:25:18","slug":"from-bravado-to-busted-bases-hidden-cost-of-us-iran-war-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=25032","title":{"rendered":"From bravado to busted bases: Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-134290141,imgsize-1221038,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg\" alt=\"From bravado to busted bases: Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed\" title=\"Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"Ta7d_ img_cptn\"><span title=\"Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed\">Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"strong\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">TOI correspondent from Washington:<\/span> The war that Iran was supposed to lose in days if not hours has now lasted more than six months and is costing America billions \u2013 $33.4 billion to be precise. <!-- -->A Pentagon report and startling new photos of wreckage at US bases in the region are beginning to tell a story that official communiques have masked.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"4\"\/>The Pentagon Inspector General\u2019s first congressionally mandated review of \u201cOperation Epic Fury\u201d puts the US cost as of June 29 at $33.4 billion: $22.3 billion in expended munitions, $7.4 billion in additional operating costs, and $3.7 billion in equipment losses.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"6\"\/>The losses include dozens of aircraft and drones &#8212; wreckage of some of which have been graphically captured in a trove of photographs obtained by CBS News from anonymous on-field personnel. <!-- -->They show Iran\u2019s missile and drone campaign inflicted considerably more damage on US forces across the Middle East than had been publicly acknowledged &#8212; even as Washington insists it has decimated Iran and still retains the capacity to continue the war.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"11\"\/>The IG report itself says Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at American installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan. Repair costs for those facilities are not included because the Pentagon has not yet decided what will be rebuilt, where, or how the costs will be shared with host nations. All this among a clamor from sections of MAGA to simply leave.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"15\"\/>CBS, through unnamed sources, has supplied the pictures to match the IG\u2019s paperwork. Photographs provided by active-duty personnel, who spoke anonymously because of military restrictions on media contact, show destroyed buildings and vehicles at Camp Buehring and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait and a badly damaged Boeing E-3 Sentry at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, its tail apparently severed by a strike.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"18\"\/>\u201cThis is major damage to our bases that hasn\u2019t been communicated to the American public,\u201d one service member told the network. Another, referring to Pentagon language describing missiles that got through defenses as \u201csquirters,\u201d said: \u201cWe\u2019re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"20\"\/>The disclosure that Iran is giving America a bloody nose challenges President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s early-war assurances that the US has beaten Iran into submission and there is no shortage of munitions as has been reported in the media. <!-- -->\u201cOur stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to,\u201d Hegseth said in March, adding that Iran was making a \u201creally bad miscalculation\u201d if it believed the US could not sustain the fight.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"24\"\/>By July, however, Hegseth was asking Congress for $67 billion in additional funding and warning that without supplemental money the Pentagon \u201ccould face critical shortfalls\u201d affecting its ability to pay troops, replenish equipment and munitions and sustain global operations. <!-- -->The IG now provides the missing middle chapter: the war did not merely consume ammunition; it produced what the report calls \u201cstrategic inventory shortfalls\u201d and exposed bottlenecks in production.<!-- --> Solid-rocket motors, high-grade explosives, propellants and skilled manufacturing labor are identified as constraints. The defense industrial base, the report says, requires \u201csignificant lead time\u201d to expand production.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"30\"\/>Meanwhile, US attention is being pulled in other directions, even as the war is entering its seventh month, with the White House now talking about an end after the November midterms. Elsewhere, Congress is challenging the continuation of hostilities and public support is weakening. A September Marquette poll found only 13% of Americans believed US war objectives had been achieved, while 79% said the war had not been worth the cost.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"34\"\/>And then there is Yemen, where Iran\u2019s Houthi allies have seized the strategic port of Mocha and advanced toward the Bab el-Mandeb, threatening a second maritime chokepoint after the Strait of Hormuz. For Washington\u2019s Gulf partners, that creates an uncomfortable strategic question: if seven months of American military power has not prevented Iran from continuing to contest Hormuz &#8212; or its Houthi allies from gaining ground at Bab el-Mandeb &#8212; how durable is the American security umbrella?<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"36\"\/>The emerging picture is neither the collapse of American military power, but nor is it the cost-free triumph once advertised. It is something more consequential: a highly talked-up US military inflicting immense damage on Iran, but itself absorbing billions in losses, consuming precious munitions and struggling to restore the strategic depth that great-power competition requires. In a region where perceptions of power matters almost as much as power itself, the photographs from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Inspector General\u2019s report, and the Houthi advance toward another global chokepoint together raise questions the US can no longer answer with bravado at briefings alone.<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/us\/from-bravado-to-busted-bases-hidden-cost-of-us-iran-war-revealed\/articleshow\/134290064.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed TOI correspondent from Washington: The war that Iran was supposed to lose in days if not hours has now lasted more than six months and is costing America billions \u2013 $33.4 billion to be precise. A Pentagon report and startling new photos of wreckage at US bases in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-31"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-small":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-small-tall":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-small-square":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-small-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-medium-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg","blogsy-wide":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Hidden cost of US-Iran war revealed TOI correspondent from Washington: The war that Iran was supposed to lose in days if not hours has now lasted more than six months and is costing America billions \u2013 $33.4 billion to be precise. A Pentagon report and startling new photos of wreckage at US bases in the [&hellip;]","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":1,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":4,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg",400,225,false],"medium":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg",300,169,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/us-iran-war-ani-file-photo.jpg",150,84,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/author\/admin"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-31\">\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}