US President Donald Trump wants the world to pay.
His surprising and unpopular assault on Iran helped cost him the US midterm elections.
And despite insisting Operation Epic Fury was “small potatoes” for the superpower he controls, the true extent of US losses has only recently become apparent.
Now, the mercurial 80-year-old wants payback.
And since he can’t get it from crushing Iran, he’s switched his sights to his allies. Again.
“This whole thing, those countries that we’ve protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war,” he told US 60 Minutes.
“We’re gonna get all that money back. And I’ve told ’em, and they’re gonna do it, 100 per cent, ’cause without us, they wouldn’t exist.”
US President Donald Trump wants countries to pay. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP
The 47th President of the United States has an expansive view of whom his war protected.
Essentially, it includes any nation that benefits from the oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Despite the fact it hadn’t been a problem before he and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu launched their war in the last week of February.
He’s already proposed a 20 per cent transit “surcharge” for shipping.
He’s announced his intention to make the Strait US territory.
“Look, I deal with these people. I deal with a lotta people, and that’s what I’ve done my whole life,” Mr Trump said.
“I make deals. And obviously, I make good deals ’cause – I made a lotta money and I became President.”
War of inflation
“You know, we do intermittent strikes,” the President stated in September.
“We are not fighting right now. There is no fighting. We are taking on a lot of oil. We control the Hormuz Strait. We control it very strongly.”
Oil is front and centre of President Trump’s mind.
It’s behind his biggest single voter crisis: diesel costs.
“We had Venezuela, which was over in 48 minutes, and we lost no soldiers. And we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars a day, and we paid for that war many times over,” he argued on Monday.
“The Venezuela people love us because we’re bringing the big oil companies in there now. They’re taking in a lot of money.”
But his war in Iran came at a much higher cost than expected.
It was supposed to last “five or six” weeks.
And the intensive first round of air strikes did.
(FA fireball lights the sky following a missile strike on Tel Aviv on February 28, 2026. Picture: John Wessels/AFP
But the subsequent seven months of stalemates have brought with them spates of intense missile and drone exchange.
At least 23 US military personnel have been killed. That number is uncertain, given unusual Pentagon accounting practices.
Some 244 military structures have been destroyed. Analysts estimate the cost of replacing and repairing them at about $US9.9 billion.
Enormously complex spy and attack drones have been shot down. Seven refuelling aircraft have been lost. And then there’s the prolific use of exquisite weaponry, such as cruise and interceptor missiles.
The US military last month put the cost of the war so far at $47.1 billion.
Amid soaring US inflation, it’s not a popular expenditure among a base of voters he had promised would not pay for more “forever wars”.
And President Trump has pitched the idea of billing the Middle East before.
“We’re protecting a very rich portion of the world, we’re spending money, and so what we’ve done is we’re going to be reimbursed for protection,” he said in July.
Protection money
“There’s more oil going through the Hormuz Strait than there was at the beginning of the war. Think of that,” President Trump asserts.
“We have ships that are going through … being babysat by a large US military presence. So how do we make a deal?”
It’s a tacit admission that Iranian attacks on tankers and infrastructure continue on an almost daily basis.
And Iran’s ally, the Houthi rebels of Yemen, have begun firing drones and missiles into Saudi Arabia.
“We have some great allies there, and we have to make sure they’re not hurt, and they would be hurt,” Mr Trump added on Monday.
“They are right now a lot safer than they were six months ago, because Iran’s been very much decapitated. But they’re still the bully of the Middle East, a little bit, and I see that.”
Sporadic attacks on shipping and oil infrastructure are becoming “the new normal”, warns Dr Karen Young of the Middle East Institute.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP
“The region and the world now enter a holding pattern, with intermittent violence that reconfigures trade and energy flows, while also forcing Iran’s neighbours to find mechanisms of both containment and accommodation.”
US negotiations with Iran have made little progress.
But Trump Administration oligarch-diplomats Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are profiting from side hustles along the way.
Now, Mr Trump has a new plan.
It’s the same as the last plan.
“We’re keeping it going. We have the greatest military blockade ever. We have the new Iron Gate,” he told the Monday White House press gathering.
“So by land and by sea, and we will take care of business.”
Israel’s unexpected bill
“Without us, Israel wouldn’t exist,” President Trump asserts.
“Let me tell you – Israel would not exist except for Donald Trump because we went in with those beautiful B-2 bombers more than a year ago, and we hit the three sites.”
He was referring to the June 2025 12-day war, which targeted Iranian underground military and nuclear infrastructure.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr Trump proclaimed at the time.
But the nuclear threat was revived as a justification for his February joint attack with Israel.
Now, President Trump wants Israel to pay.
Last week, he announced that $US3.8 billion in financial aid to the UN-mandated Jewish state will cease by the end of this year.
A woman aims a pistol during a demonstration at the inauguration of a military training centre for women volunteers at Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran. Picture: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
An embattled Mr Netanyahu responded by saying the money had been spent “both to defend itself and to confront enemies who threaten America and the West”.
He’s continuing to press the White House “every day” for renewed strikes against Tehran.
One Israeli news service reports a weekend phone call between the two leaders degenerated into “a shouting match from hell”.
But, like Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Israel is dependent on the United States. It relies especially heavily on supplies of US interceptor missiles to fend off Iranian attacks.
People inspect debris of a destroyed house following strikes reportedly carried out by Saudi Arabia on a village in Yemen. Picture: Mohammed Huwais/AFP
Not only does damaged infrastructure need to be rebuilt, existing and new sites must be hardened against future attack. And long-term alternatives must be established for transporting products amid lost confidence in Hormuz Strait security.
President Trump’s new “Iron Gate” also doesn’t apply to the Gate of Tears (the Red Sea’s Bab el Mandeb Strait).
“There is little expectation in the Gulf of a return to the pre-war equilibrium,” Dr Young argues.
“Even if diplomacy succeeds in producing a durable ceasefire and Iran gradually re-enters regional markets with sanctions relief, the Gulf Arab states appreciate that peace is expensive.”
So, responsibility for ending the war now appears to rest in the hands of those who didn’t want it.
“Stability is volatile in the region, with no end in sight for the US-Israeli conflict with Iran,” argues Shay Bottomley in the National Security Journal.
“The wider ramifications of this ongoing campaign are being felt across the Gulf states, who are now realising they’ll need to do something about it.”
