GOP presses Hegseth on Iran war munitions, costs

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed GOP concerns about depleted munitions stockpiles as “foolishly and unhelpfully overstated” during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Monday, even as lawmakers from his own party pressed him on the Iran conflict’s trajectory, its mounting cost, and the absence of any congressional vote to authorize it.

His appearance was Hegseth’s second on the Hill in under three weeks, and the reception was notably sharper. Chairman Ken Calvert, a California Republican, opened by acknowledging what he called a “remarkable uptick” in Pentagon spending — $1.5 trillion for fiscal 2027, a 44 percent increase over current levels — before pivoting to what he described as an alarming gap between what the Pentagon requests and what lawmakers are told about how the war is being fought.

“The munitions issue has been foolishly and unhelpfully overstated,” Hegseth told the panel. “We know exactly what we have, we have plenty of what we need.” He said the Pentagon was drawing on pre-positioned stocks in the region and that resupply lines were functioning without the bottlenecks some lawmakers had described.

On the question that has rattled Republicans most — what comes next — he was more expansive. “We have a plan to escalate if necessary. We have a plan to retrograde if necessary. We have a plan to shift assets,” he said. The language — retrograding, shifting — suggested an operational menu broader than the binary choice between escalation and exit that lawmakers in both parties have warned against.

The shift from Republican support to Republican skepticism was clearest in the questioning from the full committee chairman, Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “American First has never meant American alone,” Cole said. “American power is most effective when exercised in concert with like-minded nations.” It landed as a quiet rebuke to an administration that has strained allied relationships and fought the Iran campaign with little active coalition support beyond logistics and basing rights from Gulf partners.

Cost numbers are beginning to bite. Pentagon officials now put the price of the Iran conflict at roughly $29 billion since airstrikes escalated in late 2025, a figure that does not include long-term veterans’ care or the replacement of expended high-end munitions. The FY 2027 budget request asks Congress to backfill those stocks while simultaneously funding the ongoing campaign — a double bill that several subcommittee members described as unsustainable. Compounding the pressure, the consumer price index rose 3.8 percent year over year in April, well above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, and roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil normally moves through the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint at the center of the conflict. Any sustained disruption would add a supply-side shock to an economy already wrestling with persistent inflation — a scenario that spooks both parties in an election year.

The hearing exposed a Republican conference increasingly split between traditional defense hawks and a faction that wants tighter guardrails on executive war-making. Calvert, a longtime appropriator, has supported every Pentagon budget request during his tenure. His decision to use an open hearing to challenge the administration’s handling of the Iran campaign signaled that the White House can no longer count on reflexive Republican deference on defense spending. That shift has been building for weeks. Republican senators, including some who voted to confirm Hegseth, have begun raising questions about the war’s legal basis. The administration has relied on existing authorizations for the use of military force — some dating to 2001 and 2002 — to justify the Iran campaign, an argument that Democrats on the subcommittee called a stretch and that several Republicans notably declined to defend when Hegseth made it again on Monday. House Democrats have introduced legislation that would require the president to seek explicit congressional approval before expanding the scope of operations or committing additional ground forces. So far the measure has attracted no Republican co-sponsors.

Yet the silence from GOP members during Calvert’s questioning on the topic suggested the door is not closed.

Hegseth left the room to a scrum of cameras. Calvert told reporters afterward that he expected the Pentagon to return with “significantly more detail” on exit planning before the defense appropriations bill reached the floor. That marker — a Republican chairman demanding an exit plan from a Republican administration — captures a dynamic that would have been unthinkable six months ago.

The subcommittee is expected to mark up the defense spending title in the coming weeks. Whether the munitions line gets fully funded — and whether language requiring a congressional vote on any expansion of the Iran campaign makes it into the bill — will be the next barometer of how much runway Republican hawks are willing to give a war whose cost, in dollars and in political capital, is climbing faster than its stated objectives.