U.S. Launches 11th Night of Iran Strikes as War Cost Hits $37.5 Billion

U.S. forces carried out their 11th straight night of strikes against Iran on Tuesday, hitting military infrastructure in the country's northwestern Tabriz region and facilities tied to Iran's capacity to menace commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command announced.

CENTCOM said the bombing runs kicked off at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. A confirmed strike on Tabriz would represent a notable geographic expansion of the campaign, which had until now been concentrated predominantly in southern Iran and around the strait itself.

The intensified offensive unfolded on the same day Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee and pegged the official war bill at $37.5 billion — approximately $8 billion above the figure the administration had disclosed in May. Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine urged lawmakers to approve a $67 billion supplemental funding package to sustain the war effort and restock weapons inventories that have been substantially drawn down. The broader Pentagon budget request totals $1.5 trillion.

"The estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion," Hegseth said in response to questioning from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. He said the figure encompasses certain operations and maintenance costs running through the end of September but declined to offer a line-by-line breakdown. Moody's Analytics economists have put the war's toll on the domestic economy — incorporating elevated U.S. energy prices — at as much as $150 billion, a sum that dwarfs the Defense Department's own accounting.

Hegseth cautioned that without the supplemental dollars, the Pentagon would face serious gaps in its ability to pay service members and replenish weapons used in combat. He said the readiness portion of the request would go toward replacing equipment expended during recent operations.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the committee's senior Democrat, challenged Hegseth on the conflict's goals, noting that the administration's stated rationale had shifted repeatedly since hostilities erupted Feb. 28 with coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Murray argued that weapons stockpiles depleted by the fighting would require years to restore and that the war had left America's overall global military posture in a weakened state.

The U.S. military death toll since fighting began has climbed to 17. The losses include at least two soldiers who died when Iran struck U.S. positions Friday, and a third who was killed in Iraq while engaged in the destruction of an Iranian drone. Close to 100 service members have sustained wounds.

In a separate development, President Donald Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Tuesday that the United States would strike the Pickaxe Mountain complex — a hardened subterranean facility in central Iran situated roughly one mile from the Natanz uranium enrichment site — "pretty soon, and very heavily." The installation, known in Iran as Kūh-e Kolang, was identified as a centrifuge assembly site in 2021 after a comparable plant at Natanz was destroyed. Analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security who examined recent satellite imagery said construction at the location remains ongoing and that the facility sits buried roughly 100 meters underground.

Israeli intelligence has concluded that Iran moved nuclear centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain last fall, according to reporting Trump declined to deny when asked about it. Even so, Trump said he did not have it "on record" and argued that centrifuges by themselves would not constitute a threat without the underlying nuclear material to go with them.

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been denied access to Iran since U.S. strikes commenced earlier this year, creating substantial uncertainty about the state of Tehran's nuclear program.

Combat resumed last week after a June 17 ceasefire agreement between Washington and Tehran collapsed. Regional mediators — including Qatar, Egypt and Pakistan — have put forward a proposal to both governments calling for a 10-day suspension of hostilities and a framework to restore commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but diplomatic movement has stalled as each side has dug in publicly.

The conflict has also spilled across Iran's borders. Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan each reported intercepting aerial attacks on Tuesday. Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen announced a maritime blockade targeting Saudi vessels in the Red Sea, threatening to choke off a second critical energy shipping corridor at the same time. Shipping analytics firm Kpler cautioned that an extended closure of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb strait could disrupt sea lanes that handle roughly one-quarter of the world's oil supply.