$1.38 billion a day: Trump wants to ask Arab countries to foot the bill for the war against Iran
31 March 16:12
U.S. President Donald Trump may ask Arab countries to cover U.S. costs for the war against Iran, the White House said. These costs already amount to tens of billions of dollars, and the president has asked Congress to allocate an additional $200 billion.
Trump’s press secretary, Caroline Levitt, responded on Monday to reporters’ questions about whether Arab states should pay for the current war — by analogy with Operation Desert Storm in 1990–1991, when U.S. allies helped finance the liberation of Kuwait by coalition forces “I think the president would approach them with such a request with great interest,” Al Jazeera quotes Levitt as saying. “I wouldn’t want to get ahead of him on this issue, but I certainly know he has this idea, and I think you’ll hear more from him about it,” reports "Komersant Ukrainian".
Pentagon officials informed Congress that the cost of the operation against Iran over the first six days amounted to $11.3 billion. According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and Defense Studies, the cost reached $16.5 billion over the first 12 days of the war. Based on the latter figure, each day of the war costs the U.S. an average of $1.38 billion.
Trump, meanwhile, has asked Congress to allocate an additional $200 billion for the military campaign and to replenish the ammunition expended during it.
For the Gulf War 35 years ago, countries in the region and coalition members, including Germany and Japan, raised $54 billion to help cover the U.S. costs (about $134 billion in today’s money). However, at that time, the coalition had a UN mandate and was tasked with liberating Kuwait from Iraqi forces that had invaded the country. Now, the U.S. and Israel have launched a military operation against Iran on their own, without any support.
The issue of war payments has been raised several times during the current campaign. Sean Hannity, a right-wing commentator close to Trump, stated that Iran must reimburse the U.S. for the costs of the military operation against it with its oil. In turn, Tehran has named reparations—which the U.S. must pay for the destruction inflicted upon it—among the conditions for ending the war.
The Gulf states themselves are suffering significant losses due to the war and Iranian missile and drone strikes. For example, repairing just two damaged production lines at the world’s largest natural gas liquefaction complex will cost $26 billion and take three to five years, Saad al-Kaabi, CEO of QatarEnergy and Qatar’s energy minister, told Reuters.
