The price tags are arriving all at once, and none of them are small. Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, appeared on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday to confirm what budget analysts had been estimating since the first bombs fell on Tehran on February 28: the United States has spent approximately $12 billion on its war against Iran in just over two weeks. The figure, which Hassett initially appeared to present as a projected total before clarifying it reflected the latest briefings, lands against a backdrop of crude oil surging past $106 a barrel, a Strait of Hormuz that has effectively ceased functioning as a global energy corridor, and a growing roster of allied nations that have publicly, and in some cases sharply, declined the president's request for a naval coalition.
The convergence of those developments—staggering war costs, an energy supply crisis described by the International Energy Agency as the largest disruption in history, and an isolating diplomatic moment for Washington—marks the end of the war's opening phase and the beginning of something far harder to manage: the second week becoming the third, with no clear end in sight and the bills compounding daily.
Hassett attempted to project calm in his Sunday interview, arguing that financial markets pricing future energy contracts were already anticipating a swift resolution and lower oil prices. "America is not going to have its economy harmed by what the Iranians are doing," he said, pointing out that unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s, the United States is now a major energy producer. The markets, however, were not cooperating with the talking points. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose more than 3 percent on Sunday to briefly top $106 a barrel before settling at $104.63 on Monday morning, according to data from Al Jazeera. Global oil prices have risen more than 40 percent since the war began on February 28.
The mechanism of that price surge is straightforward and brutal. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply normally flows, has been effectively closed by Iranian action. Historical traffic through the strait averaged 138 ships per day. Since the start of the war, no more than five ships have passed through daily, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre. At least 16 commercial vessels have been attacked in the region. Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei—who took power after his father Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening US-Israeli strikes—has publicly committed to keeping the waterway closed as leverage in the conflict.
The IEA's response, authorizing the release of 400 million barrels from emergency reserves in what the agency called the largest coordinated drawdown in its history, has so far failed to meaningfully suppress prices. Energy strategists have noted the arithmetic problem directly. Global daily demand runs at roughly 105 million barrels. The emergency release represents less than four days of that consumption, and the geopolitical risk premium embedded in current prices—estimated at roughly $40 per barrel above what market fundamentals would otherwise support—cannot be dissolved by reserve releases alone. It can only be dissolved by ships moving freely through the Strait of Hormuz, which they currently are not.
At American gas stations, those distant dynamics translate into immediate arithmetic. The national average for regular gasoline has climbed steadily since late February; the combination of Kharg Island's bombing last week and the sustained Hormuz closure is expected to keep pressure on pump prices through March and into April. Airlines, which hedge fuel costs months in advance, have been adjusting their hedging strategies in ways that industry analysts say will begin flowing into ticket prices within weeks. Trucking companies are invoking fuel surcharge clauses in shipping contracts. Every link in the supply chain that runs on diesel is transmitting cost increases downstream.
The $12 billion figure for US war expenditures does not exist in isolation from that consumer pain—it is a related data point in the same story of a conflict whose costs are spreading far beyond the battlefield. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking over the weekend, warned that the bombardment of Iran is "about to surge dramatically," a statement that points in precisely one fiscal direction. Munitions alone accounted for more than $5 billion in the first week of operations, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan noted during the Hassett interview—a figure the economic adviser did not directly address when pressed.
The diplomatic picture that emerged over the weekend may prove as consequential as the financial one. President Trump spent Saturday and Sunday publicly calling on allies to contribute warships to a coalition that would escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The appeal was directed personally at China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom; Trump later expanded it to all NATO member states, warning that those who failed to assist would face a "very bad future" in their relationship with Washington.
The responses came back negative with unusual speed. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament Monday that Tokyo has no plans to dispatch naval vessels, while noting that Japan imports 80 percent of its energy from the Gulf region—making the Hormuz closure acutely painful for Japanese consumers even as Tokyo declines to send ships. Australia was equally direct: "We won't be sending a ship to the Strait of Hormuz," cabinet minister Catherine King said in an interview with ABC Australia on Monday. France confirmed it will not send ships, with the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs stating its posture remains "defensive." China said it is calling for hostilities to stop, without committing to any military role in securing the waterway.
The muted coalition response places Trump in an uncomfortable position. His Truth Social posts over the weekend alternated between demanding allied participation and threatening to "bomb the hell out of the shoreline" unilaterally. The former posture reflects awareness that the US Navy cannot indefinitely operate alone in the confined, mine-threatened geography of the strait; the latter reflects the frustration of a president who has been unable to translate overwhelming early military advantage—Trump claimed last week that "100% of Iran's military capability" had been destroyed—into a diplomatic or economic resolution.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, emerging from a classified briefing in early March, said he was "truly worried about mission creep" and that the administration had given "different answers every day" on the war's objectives—a characterization that the shifting target sets of Operation Epic Fury, which has moved from Iran's nuclear program to its missile systems to its oil infrastructure, does little to refute. Senator Chris Van Hollen told Al Jazeera that the US had "taken the lid off Pandora's box without any idea where this will land."
Thirteen American service members have been killed in the conflict, and more than 140 have been wounded, according to figures released over the weekend. Those numbers, which carry the full human weight of the conflict's cost, have been somewhat overshadowed in the public discourse by the economic indicators—understandably so, given that high fuel prices are felt by every household, while military casualties are concentrated in the families of those who serve. But the two categories of cost are products of the same decision, prosecuted through the same campaign, and they are both rising.
For Americans trying to understand what $12 billion, 13 dead soldiers, $106 oil, and a closed Strait of Hormuz add up to, the administration's answer remains elusive. Hassett's assurances that markets see a swift resolution are contradicted by the markets themselves. Hegseth's promise of surging bombardment suggests no swift resolution is imminent. And the allied silence in response to Trump's coalition call suggests that whatever endgame Washington is pursuing in Iran, it will be pursuing it with a smaller international coalition than the one it may have assumed would materialize when the first strikes were ordered two weeks ago.