The Pentagon has informed U.S. senators that it requires approximately $80 billion in new funding — the bulk of it to pay for the American war against Iran — a request that would pile on top of an already enormous military spending increase sought by President Donald Trump.
While the White House Office of Management and Budget has not yet submitted a formal request to Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making visits to Capitol Hill, including on Monday evening. A senior deputy defense secretary briefed senators on the Iran-related funding request last week, according to two individuals familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the situation.
The request arrives at a politically sensitive time. Many lawmakers remain skeptical of the deal Trump reached with Iran to bring the war to a close and are uncertain about what comes next. The White House has already put forward a staggering $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget — an increase of nearly 50% over the current fiscal year.
Meanwhile, discrepancies have surfaced over what exactly was agreed to during high-level peace talks in Switzerland, where Vice President JD Vance led negotiations Monday alongside Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf. Technical teams have since been working to nail down the specifics of a deal.
One point of contention involves nuclear inspections. Vance had said the Switzerland talks produced an agreement allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters Tuesday that no such visits had been scheduled.
Trump has also framed the potential unfreezing of Iranian financial assets as a boon for American agriculture, saying the money would be tied to Iran purchasing U.S.-grown corn, soybeans, and wheat. “These are things that are desperately needed by Iran,” Trump posted on social media. “This is a humanitarian crisis, and I feel it is necessary to help.”
Vance echoed that position, saying unfrozen Iranian funds “would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”
However, Iran pushed back on that framing. Baghaei said Tehran’s import decisions are based on “prices and quality,” adding: “It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers.”
Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also disputed Vance’s claim that the U.S. and Qatar would have a say in how Iran spends any unfrozen assets. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
Experts say a major surge in U.S. agricultural exports to Iran is unlikely. “I don’t expect that trade would be very large in the short run,” said Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Glauber noted that Iran already has established food suppliers including Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Argentina, and that pressuring Iran to buy American could “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
On the domestic front, Trump is scheduled to visit a Mack Truck facility in the Allentown area of Pennsylvania on Tuesday — his first significant public appearance outside Washington since signing the interim agreement to end the Iran war. The trip is seen as an effort to shift focus toward the U.S. economy as November midterm elections approach. It marks Trump’s fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania. The Macungie facility sits in the 7th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks this fall.
The visit comes as economic concerns grow. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll — consistent with the previous month’s numbers.
In other developments, two more individuals have been arrested in connection with an alleged plot targeting Trump’s UFC cage-fighting event at the White House earlier this month. Law enforcement disrupted the plan several days before the June 14 event. William Lee Spartacus Falkner of Belfair, Washington, was arrested Friday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the Western District of Washington. Jordan W. Rincker, 28, was arrested Sunday on the same charge in the Western District of Missouri. Neither has yet entered a plea.
Separately, a federal judge on Monday blocked a recently updated version of a federal database program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, which was central to the Trump administration’s push to remove noncitizens from state voter rolls. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups who argued the upgraded system improperly consolidated Americans’ sensitive personal data in ways that could lead to eligible voters being wrongly removed. She said Congress had explicitly banned the centralization of such data and that the agencies behind the program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”
Also, National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police continued patrolling the area around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as the Trump administration races against a self-imposed deadline to repair a troubled renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration. The $14 million-plus project has been plagued by a peeling liner and an algae bloom. Trump has said the pool will likely need to be drained again for repairs and has alleged, without offering evidence, that vandals dumped fertilizer in the water and cut the liner with a box cutter. Contractors and federal workers have been using chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to address the algae problem, though a clear repair timeline had not been established as of Monday.
