On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance held a White House press briefing, the first since former press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s departure last month, in which he defended the energy costs of data centers and deflected on high gas prices. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously claimed prices would lower to $3 per gallon by Labor Day. (That has yet to happen.) Vance blamed Iran for energy costs remaining high, but it was his comments about the ongoing Iran war that drew special attention.
In February, the Trump administration joined Israel in attacking Iran, in what the president repeatedly promised was to be a short affair, roughly four to six weeks. Around the same time, Vance himself claimed there was “no chance” the war would drag out. Now six months later, the U.S. has reported 18 military personnel killed and more than 750 wounded, with a ballooning cost estimated somewhere between $71 billion and $118 billion. According to the independent defense research portal MilitarySpend, between 1,700 to 3,700 civilians across the Middle East have died in the war, most of them Iranian.
