Republicans held more than 30 hearings on Benghazi. They haven’t held any specifically on Trump’s Iran war

Donald Trump’s war in Iran has eclipsed 200 days, with no end in sight. At least 18 U.S. service members are dead and more than 750 are injured. Thousands of Iranians have been killed. The government estimates the war is costing taxpayers $246 million per day, and billions of dollars every month. Global energy prices are spiking, and threats to key shipping lanes, military bases and civilian infrastructure risk blowing up the conflict into a wider, endless war.

Yet congressional Republicans have not held a single standalone congressional hearing to ask administration officials and military leaders about its growing costs and an exit plan, among other questions, despite Democrats’ urgent demands for transparency.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Independent that the Republican majority has “abdicated the most basic oversight responsibilities” of the committee.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and military leadership have addressed congressional panels during budget hearings as they pushed for billions of dollars to build up the nation’s arsenal. But for more than six months, members of Congress have not held any dedicated public hearings to investigate the war that is rapidly depleting it.

Compare the absence of public hearings to the intense congressional scrutiny into an attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

That attack — which fueled right-wing outrage at then-President Barack Obama’s administration and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — resulted in the deaths of four Americans: U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

The government opened at least 10 probes — including at least six House investigations — into the attack and security lapses, and congressional committees held more than two dozen hearings on the incident.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi held at least four public hearings. The Senate Intelligence Committee held at least three. Several other senate committees held at least four more.

Republican-controlled House committees on Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform held at least 22 hearings combined.

The select committee on Benghazi released its final report June 28, 2016, marking one of the longest-ever special committees in U.S. history.

No such congressional investigations have been launched in the wake of Trump’s attacks in Iran. Internal probes at the Pentagon following a deadly strike on a girls’ school appear to have dissolved, and military officials ruled out any other investigations into civilian deaths.

The United Nations, however, has determined that two U.S. airstrikes on Iran in February that killed at least 178 civilians, including dozens of children, may have amounted to war crimes.

The U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28. Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine didn’t testify to Congress until April.

Their most recent appearance was in July, marking the first time they had addressed the public after the deaths of at least three American service members within two days one week earlier.

The defense secretary repeatedly said throughout the hearing that the Pentagon is struggling to bolster the military due to “gross negligence and neglect” under former President Joe Biden, who Hegseth claimed “abandoned” the U.S. “strength posture around the world.”

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates costs for the Iran war have exploded to roughly $38 billion and is expected to cost another $2 billion to $3 billion for each additional month of fighting.

More than half of the cost came from replacing missiles and other munitions, with billions of dollars for increased hours and fuel, according to the CBO report.

The war has also consumed as much as two-thirds of the nation’s missile-defense interceptors since June 2025, leaving the U.S. with reduced inventories for several years, the report found.

Rebuilding the nation's supply of interceptors “would probably take at least five years — even if production was increased,” according to the report.

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the CBO score reflects the “staggering toll in terms of lives lost and wounded in action, as well as in the waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars” and the “overwhelming lack of transparency and level of incompetence that have together been the hallmarks of this administration.”

“This report is based on the information the CBO has been able to analyze. Yet even the CBO has not had access to the full accounting of losses and damage to equipment and infrastructure, munitions stockpiles, materiel, and force posture,” he said.

After the U.S. entered the sixth month of war, Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump had “entangled the United States in a foreign policy failure of historic consequence.”

“When he unilaterally launched this war, Trump promised he would destroy Iran’s nuclear program, eliminate its missile and drone arsenal, dismantle its defense industrial base, wipe out its proxy networks, and topple the regime in a matter of weeks,” he added.

“Six months later, not a single objective has been achieved. Indeed, he has weakened our position in the Middle East and the world significantly,” he said.

U.S. deaths include six service members who were killed after two refueling jets collided above Iraq. An Iranian drone strike that hit a command post in Kuwait killed another six service members.

At least one American service member was killed after the controlled detonation of an unexploded Iranian drone in July, and three service members were killed days earlier while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in Jordan, marking the first American deaths in the aftermath of a tenuous ceasefire agreement earlier this year.

“The American people deserve answers, transparency, and accountability from an administration defined by dysfunction, self-dealing, and corruption,” Meeks, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Independent. “Instead, Committee Republicans have chosen to serve as Donald Trump’s rubber stamp rather than fulfill their constitutional responsibility as a co-equal branch of government.”

The Independent has requested comment from the Pentagon.