■ OPERATION EPIC FURY · COST & FORCE TRACKER
Iran War
Direct strikes, a collapsed deal, and the running cost.
UPDATED WED OCT 7 · 3:44 PM PT
DAY 222 · US–IRAN WAR
Houthi strikes on the Abha and Riyadh airports kill three and wound 36, Saudi aviation officials say, as Hormuz stays shut on Tehran’s terms.
222
Days of war
Since Feb 28
$100.20
Brent crude · ICE settle
WTI $88.28 · Dec Brent · Wed Oct 7 settle
Blockaded
Strait of Hormuz · CENTCOM
CENTCOM: 1B barrels, 2,000 transits · Sep 19
19
U.S. deaths · public list
Washington Post: 22 in internal data
- The Saudi front heats. Houthi attacks on the Abha and King Khalid airports killed three foreign residents and wounded 36, Saudi civil aviation says. The coalition says it hit a launch platform in Sanaa (The Tribune · CBS).
- Mocha, if it holds. Yemen’s government says it retook Mocha and Dhubab and holds Bab al-Mandeb; a Yemeni officer said Houthis were still fighting around Dhubab Tuesday. AFP counts over 270 dead in 24 hours (CBS · Al Jazeera).
- The pact goes live. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan agreed to activate deterrence measures and rapidly deploy forces to the kingdom, no size or date given. The GCC called the airport strikes “a dangerous escalation” (Al Jazeera · Al-Monitor).
- Closing the side door. IRGC adviser Mohammadreza Naqdi told Fars that Iran will soon shut the “few routes” it calls illegal along Oman’s coast, and that the strait stays closed until Tehran’s demands are met (Reuters via Al-Monitor).
- Hits at sea. Trackers count at least 12 tanker attacks near Hormuz in the week to Oct 5, the war’s most. On Wednesday a tanker off northern Qatar reported being struck by multiple projectiles (gCaptain · CBS).
- Reserves, faster. Brent settled down 38 cents Wednesday at $100.20 and WTI at $88.28, down $1.16, after IEA members agreed to speed the last 100M barrels of March’s release, diesel first (Reuters · IEA).
- Two registers. Vance told Reuters Iran must do “something meaningful on their enrichment capacity” to end the war. A senior Iranian official told Reuters enrichment is a red line Tehran won’t bend on (Dawn · CBS).
WORDS VS. MOVEMENT
Same water, two rulebooks
UPDATED MON OCT 5 · 8:39 AM PT
United States
SAY
Trump says the war ends “right after the election, maybe before,” that Iran is “ready to fold up,” and, in Mobile on Oct 2, “We could leave tomorrow, and it would take them years to rebuild.” He promises oil “will come tumbling down” once it ends, and that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. On Sep 26 he said of Tehran’s paper, “I reject their proposal”; on Oct 4, that Iran can have it “the easy way, or the hard way.”
DO
The force is growing, not leaving: the Theodore Roosevelt strike group and the Makin Island amphibious group are deploying with about 9,000 sailors and Marines, which CBS says puts three carriers and some 20,000 US forces in the region by late October. Treasury sanctioned Iran Khodro, SAIPA and the state railway and proposed cutting off the A7 payment network; the WSJ reports Trump does not intend to lift the maritime blockade. Washington backed the G7’s 100M-barrel release. The one thing that left: the B-1s at RAF Fairford, flown home after the British arrests over an alleged bomb plot at the base, which Iran denies. On Sep 24 the Senate declined to order the forces home, 49–50.
Iran
SAY
Security council secretary Mohsen Rezaei calls Trump “the worst president in American history” and says he “can neither negotiate nor fight”; the IRGC promises to answer any threat “more lethally” than its October 2024 missile salvo on Israel. Araghchi says there’s “no military solution, nor any solution based on new sanctions,” and on Oct 4 his deputy Gharibabadi said Tehran’s “final response” to Washington’s answer on the seven-day Hormuz plan is ready. Speaker Qalibaf says the strait stays shut until Iran’s seven conditions are met.
DO
Tehran is writing the closure into law: parliament advanced a bill asserting control of the strait and charging commercial ships fees, on top of the security commission’s 20%-of-cargo penalty for unauthorized transits. The Persian Gulf Strait Authority’s blacklist reached 81 vessels on Sep 28 (Windward). Shipping keeps taking fire: a Western official told the NYT Iran launches about 30 drones and 10 anti-ship missiles a week, mostly missing, and the IRGC navy claimed on Oct 4 to have hit seven “violating” tankers in five days, Kuwaiti and Emirati among them (Fars).
SOURCES:
CBS 10/7 · airports, Qatar tanker
ANI via The Tribune 10/8 · GACA
Reuters 10/7 · settle, IEA
Reuters via Al-Monitor 10/7 · Naqdi
Reuters via Dawn 10/7 · Vance
gCaptain 10/7 · tanker attack count
CBS 10/6 · Dhubab, AFP, MH-60R
Al Jazeera 10/6 · Jazan, Najran, Sanaa
Al-Monitor 10/5 · Mecca pact
Al Jazeera 10/4 · Fairford
Xinhua via Morung Express 10/4 · Fars
Reuters via WTAQ 10/5 · Treasury alert
Middle East Eye 10/4 · Gharibabadi
Alabama Reflector 10/2 · Mobile
NYT via Inquirer 10/2 · attack rate
CBS 10/5 · Araghchi, G7, carriers
Al-Monitor 10/1 · auto, rail
Fortune 9/19 · CENTCOM
🏔️ THEATRE MAP — GULF / HORMUZ
The full force-laydown map — carriers, bases, named strike sites, incidents, and the Jun 9–10 strike corridor — lives on Track the Troops →
FOR THE RECORD
The Islamabad Memorandum — signed Jun 17 at Versailles, declared “over” in Ankara Jul 8. What was signed, and where each clause ended up.
THE ISLAMABAD MOU · 14 POINTS
Signed Jun 17 — Trump at Versailles, Pezeshkian by electronic exchange, Pakistan’s prime minister as broker. In effect at signature; the Geneva ceremony was scrapped as redundant. The full text reached NPR within a day.
- Permanent end of operations on all fronts — Lebanon included — no future war, threats of force, or interference
- Mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity
- 60 days to a final Deal, extendable by mutual consent
- Blockade comes off — removal begins at signature, complete within 30 days; US forces leave Iran’s periphery 30 days after the final Deal
- Hormuz reopens — Iran de-mines and runs safe passage, free for 60 days; the strait’s future administration to be settled with Oman
- $300B reconstruction plan for Iran, assembled by the US with regional partners
- All sanctions terminated — UNSC, IAEA and unilateral US, primary and secondary, on a schedule set in the final Deal
- No Iranian bomb, reaffirmed — the stockpile down-blended on-site under IAEA supervision; enrichment itself deferred to the final Deal
- Status-quo freeze — Iran’s nuclear program holds where it is; no new US sanctions or regional deployments
- Oil moves immediately — Treasury waivers for Iranian crude and the banking, insurance and shipping around it
- Frozen assets made usable to Iran’s central bank once release procedures are agreed
- A joint compliance monitor to police implementation
- Sequencing — final-deal talks open only once the ceasefire, blockade lift, safe passage, waivers and asset release are moving
- A binding UNSC resolution to seal the final Deal
HOW IT DIED · 21 DAYS
In effect Jun 17. Pronounced “over” Jul 8. The unraveling, clause by clause:
- Jun 17 — the ink still wet. Tehran rules out negotiating missiles or shipping uranium abroad, and says strait fees start when the free days lapse; Washington had promised Hormuz “permanently toll-free.” Ghalibaf calls the text “a record of US failure.”
- Jun 18–19 — Lebanon breaks first. ¶1 covers “all fronts, including Lebanon” — Israel says it signed nothing and isn’t bound. South Lebanon logs the deadliest day of the whole war; the first talks slip.
- Late June — a narrow channel. Convoys move by permission on approved routes; the strait runs about a third full; oil eases to $72. Khamenei’s funerals freeze the talks through Jul 9. Doha briefs “positive progress.”
- Jul 7 — the ships burn. Iranian missiles hit a Qatari gas carrier and a Saudi crude tanker inside the strait the paper reopened. Free passage (¶5) dies at sea.
- Jul 8 — pronounced dead. US aircraft strike 80-plus coastal targets; Iran answers at bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Trump, in Ankara, declares the memorandum “over” and “a waste of time.”
- Jul 14 — back to February. The blockade ¶4 lifted is reimposed and ships are turned back; the IRGC calls Hormuz closed again. The 60-day clock (¶3) stops at Day 27, 33 unused.
WHAT’S LEFT OF IT
Dead on the ground: the all-fronts ceasefire (¶1), the blockade lift (¶4), free passage (¶5) — all reversed by Jul 14.
Never tested: the $300B reconstruction plan (¶6) and sanctions termination (¶7) — parked in a final Deal whose talks ¶13 conditioned on a ceasefire that didn’t hold.
Never resolved: whether anyone may charge for the strait — Washington says nobody tolls an international waterway; Tehran says its coast, its services, its fees — and whether a paper Israel never signed could bind Lebanon.
Read the shape: the signed text ran 14 points, not Washington’s nine — structurally Tehran’s draft, down to the Oman dialogue on strait administration. 60 days of runway; the paper lived 21.
IRAN WAR COSTS
Where the money goes. Public DoD, CBO & think-tank reporting — re-pegged Sep 21 · Day 206.
SPENDING ESTIMATES
$80–100B
TOTAL EST. COST
~$240M
AVG DAILY BURN
$530–660
COST PER TAXPAYER
The Receipts
The $80–100B is the all-in internal estimate US officials describe; the Pentagon’s own ledger is narrower. On Sep 18 it told the defense committees the war had cost $43.6B through Sep 3 on a new CENTCOM assessment — $11.2B in operations, $28.1B to replace munitions, $4.3B for lost equipment — plus $1.5B in extra fuel, for $45.1B. That excludes base repairs, and it’s up from the $37.5B Hegseth gave Senate Appropriations on Jul 21. The Pentagon’s inspector general priced the first four months at $33.4B through Jun 30. The tab opened at $11.3B for the war’s first six days. Outside tallies run toward $200B once aircraft replacement (42 lost or damaged, per CRS), base repair and economy-wide costs load in; an $87B war supplemental sits with Congress. The daily burn is the Pentagon’s $45.1B spread across the war’s first 188 days, through Sep 3 — well under April’s $810M peg because the ledger now spans two long lulls. Not on any ledger: 19 US service members killed on the Pentagon’s public list, at least 22 in internal data the Washington Post reported Sep 18, and more than 750 wounded as of late August. Taxpayer figure: ~152M federal filers against the internal estimate. Re-pegged Sep 21 · Day 206.