The US-Israel war on Iran is increasingly being measured in economic terms, with starkly different estimates from Tehran and Tel Aviv highlighting the scale and uncertainty of the conflict’s financial toll.
Iran says the US-Israel war has inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in damage , while Israel’s own ministries have offered sharply lower estimates of the costs of the campaign, underscoring how the conflict is already being measured not only in casualties but in economic ruin.
In Iran, officials say the combined US and Israeli bombing campaign has caused about $ 270 billion in losses , according to government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani, who spoke to Russia’s Ria Novosti .
She warned those figures were only "preliminary and very crude", adding that Iran’s economic bloc would later produce a more precise assessment based first on damage to buildings, and then on lost budget revenue and the wider impact of industrial shutdowns.
Tehran is also pursuing what it describes as legal and diplomatic remedies, an issue which the Iranian delegation in Islamabad has stressed needs to be in any long-term peace plan.
Mohajerani said the negotiating team was pressing the issue of US military reparations, while Iran’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Amir Saeed Iravani, has separately demanded compensation from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan over their alleged role in the war, according to a letter seen by Ria Novosti .
The letter , addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and to Bahrain, which currently holds the seat as the president of the UN Security Council, argues that allowing the use of those countries’ territory by "aggressors" amounted to an act of aggression.
Iran says the destruction was not only financial but human as well. The war campaign, which Donald Trump had threatened would bomb Iran "back to the Stone Age", devastated major critical infrastructure and destroyed residential buildings.
Reports suggest at least 3,540 people were killed, including 244 children. Israel’s costs Israel, meanwhile, has disclosed far smaller figures for its own war spending.
Its finance ministry issued a rare statement on Sunday estimating the budgetary cost of the war at 35 billion shekels , or about $1.5 billion.
That total included around 22 billion shekels in direct military costs, 12 billion shekels in compensation to businesses and households, and 1 billion shekels for civilian spending.
The ministry said Israel’s 850.6 billion shekel budget, approved on 30 March, should be able to absorb the expense. But the statement did not clarify whether the figure included operations in Lebanon , where Israel has also mobilised roughly 120,000 troops.
That estimate was immediately challenged by defence officials.
The defence ministry has argued that the campaign against Iran alone cost 39 billion shekels and said more money would be needed to sustain the Lebanon campaign. It is also seeking an additional 7 billion shekels for reconstruction. US spending remains unclear The US has not published a full official account of what the war cost Washington since a Pentagon briefing to Congress at the start of the war suggested the first six days alone cost the US $11.3 billion.
Other estimates paint a broader picture.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies said battle damage over the same period reached $1.4 billion, and at least $3.5 billion over five weeks.
That figure includes major equipment losses such as a $1.1 billion radar system at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, four F-15E Strike Eagles, and a $700 million AWACS aircraft in Saudi Arabia.
A more pessimistic estimate, published by public policy experts at the Harvard Kennedy School, put the war’s cost to Washington at around $ 2 billion per day . That would explain why Trump has sought $1.5 trillion in Congress to boost the US defence budget.
Analysts argue that the absence of a comprehensive official estimate leaves open the question of how much the war has already cost taxpayers, and how much more it may yet cost in military replenishment, repairs, and long-term regional commitments such as the ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports at the Strait of Hormuz .