Warometer

The Metric That Matters · Strait of Hormuz

Vessel transits — the waterway the whole war turns on

The strait is functionally shut, and the thing that has been absorbing the shock is now itself under attack. On July 25 the Houthis said they fired missiles and drones at Saudi Aramco facilities at Yanbu and Jizan — Yanbu being the sole Red Sea terminus of the East–West Petroline, the largest single Hormuz bypass at an estimated 2.5–3.5 mbpd. Saudi authorities issued emergency warnings and withdrew them; Aramco confirmed nothing. Riyadh then struck the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. For four months every reading of this crisis treated the bypass corridor as a given and the strait as the variable. That assumption inverted this weekend.

Then the tempo broke, and then it broke the other way. CENTCOM posted no strike announcement on Friday, Jul 24, the first gap after nearly two weeks of nightly posts; the US then suspended the strike campaign over the weekend of Jul 25–26, roughly eighty strikes into a campaign against Iranian air defenses, command and control, coastal radar, anti-ship missile capability and more than sixty IRGC small craft. Diplomacy filled the gap. Oman put a Malacca-style proposal to Tehran — a regional consortium funded by voluntary user contributions, with Iran not holding sole control — and Gulf foreign ministers met on the strait Tuesday. Netanyahu met Trump at the White House the same day; the White House called it positive and productive.

On Tuesday, Jul 28, Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi rejected the equal-split proposal on state television. He counter-proposed a temporary arrangement running one traffic direction and part of the return through Iranian waters, said the strait stays closed if Muscat refuses, stated Tehran has never recognised the southern Omani route, and ruled out any third country de-mining the strait even at Omani invitation. Tehran says it has no plans to negotiate with the US directly and is proceeding step by step with Oman only.

Two readings, one waterway — and this week the gap between them became the whole story. Brent gave back roughly 16% across three sessions into a settle near $84 on Jul 28, the worst three-day run since April 2020, on de-escalation expectations. Nothing in the physical record improved to justify it. Transits stand at 15 vessels on Jul 19 against a ~88/day baseline. Lloyd's List logged 78 total transits for Jul 13–19 against 174 the week before, and transits of ships with no Iranian nexus fell to 25 from 108. Inbound traffic into the Gulf fell to 8 vessels from 43. War-risk cover still prices at 3–10% of hull value against 0.25% before the war, and the IMO's secretary-general has said publicly that pricing is not adjusting as conditions improve. The price of the barrel fell. The cost of moving it did not.

Baseline ~88 vessels/day (all vessels, pre-crisis, IMF PortWatch). PortWatch counts AIS-broadcasting crossings only; roughly 84 tankers are running dark, so true flow runs higher than the printed figure and no one is required to declare it. Port arrivals across Hormuz-area ports in the most recent 24 hours reached 428 vessels. Crude throughput in barrels could not be sourced this session and is not estimated here. Transit and vessel data as of Jul 26, 2026.

Ledger 1 · Direct Military

Official + disclosed burn

active campaign ~$400M/day (modeled, unchanged) · comptroller figure pending

$29B official floor (Pentagon, May 12) — about $24B of it repairing the 42 aircraft lost — plus disclosed standby burn since. Regional base damage still uncounted. The rate is deliberately unchanged this week. CENTCOM skipped its Friday post after nearly two weeks of nightly strikes, which is one data point and not a disclosed rate; stepping the model down on a single missing announcement would be exactly the unsupported fiddling this page exists to avoid. The model also does not step up for the naval blockade enforcement in the Gulf of Oman or the widening Red Sea front, both of which carry real cost. The ~$400M/day sits above standby and below the opening surge, and it holds until a comptroller figure exists.

Official + disclosed rate

Ledger 2 · Indirect / Economic

Energy & inflation drag

in-year drag booked · premium unwinding, Brent ~$84–88

The acute shock drove oil to a $126 peak in April and added ~+0.6pp to headline inflation (Dallas Fed). Oil round-tripped below $70 on Jul 1 (EIA) as the ceasefire held — reversed hard to $101 intraday on Jul 23, then unwound roughly 16% across three sessions to settle near $84 on Jul 28. The pump lags: the most recent verified US national average is $4.00/gallon on Jul 20 (AAA), up from $3.87 a week earlier and $3.14 a year ago, and no newer AAA print is used here. The energy channel is running through crude, not gas — Henry Hub is near $2.90, a six-week low, with inventories 6.6% above the five-year average. Attribution caveat: new Section 301 tariffs of 10–12.5% on roughly 60 trading partners took effect Jul 24, so July inflation carries a second, non-war driver this ledger does not and should not claim. Pass-through already in prices does not reverse cleanly: Moody's cites ~$132B to consumers and taxpayers, booked and capped here as an in-year figure.

Modeled · in-year drag booked

Ledger 3 · Cost of Capital

Repriced credit, in-year

acute-phase drag · FOMC decides today, Jul 29, 2:00 PM ET

The acute phase erased the Fed's cut path (held 3.50–3.75% Jun 17; dot plot flipped to hikes). Treasury yields reached 18-month highs during the week, and the FOMC announces today, Wednesday Jul 29 at 2:00 PM ET, with a hold priced at 62–64% and the balance on a quarter-point hike — the first meeting where the energy input has moved 16% in the week before the vote. This page flagged a tension last week — a rising oil premium against a risk-on tape — and it resolved the opposite way to the one implied. The tape did break: the S&P closed 7,411.98 and the Nasdaq 24,975.82 on Jul 24, all three major indices lower on the week, the Nasdaq off ~2%. But the cause was not oil. The Magnificent Seven shed $797B in a single session on Jul 23 — the steepest one-day drop since April 2025 — after Alphabet lifted 2026 capex guidance to as much as $205B and Tesla posted negative free cash flow. Brent broke $100 the same day and moved less money than the spending plans did. The VIX sits at 18.58, still pricing no supply crisis. The war premium in the rate curve is real and booked; the equity market is currently repricing something adjacent to it, not it.

Modeled · acute-phase drag

Ledger 1.5 · Munitions & Interceptor Asymmetry

The cost of winning every engagement

Iran employs low-cost drones and missiles. US and partner forces counter primarily with far more expensive interceptors. The intercept usually succeeds. The economics still favor the attacker.

Attacker · per munition

$20K–$60K

Shahed-type drone

exchange50:1 – 150:1against the defender

Defender · per shot

$1M–$4M+

PAC-3 / SM-2/6 / THAAD

Defenders shifted toward cheaper effectors (guns, AIM-9X, electronic warfare, directed-energy prototypes) precisely because firing a $3M interceptor at a $30K drone is unsustainable. This narrows the per-shot ratio. It does not relieve the structural burden: every salvo still forces expenditure of limited-inventory munitions, magazine replenishment, a long logistics tail, and sustained readiness across dispersed bases. This is the multiplier standard reporting omits — and it favors the attacker over time.

Illustrative model · adds $0 to the total · confidence: low–moderate

Ledger 5 · The Rest of the World

What the war costs everyone who isn't American

Every figure above this line is a cost to Americans. That is the counter's discipline and it does not change. But the strait is not an American waterway, and the bill does not stop at the US border. This ledger counts the non-US economic cost across five channels. It adds $0 to the counter above and has no live ticker — it is a cumulative band, not a clock.

$260B – $455B

gross — what buyers paid above the pre-war baseline

Channel	Gross	Net	Basis
Crude premium	$170–290B	$60–120B	~103 mbpd global consumption × 151 days × $12–25/bbl above the ~$68 pre-war Brent baseline, non-US share
Gas & LNG	$35–65B	$25–45B	EU TTF €64.02/MWh, +93.8% y/y; Asian JKM spillover; Qatari cargo disruption
Maritime & freight	$25–50B	$18–35B	War-risk AWRP at 3–10% of hull value against 0.25% pre-war; VLCC charters to $770K/day; Cape rerouting
Trade friction	$10–25B	$7–15B	Delayed and diverted cargo, contract renegotiation, inventory carry, ~6,000 stranded seafarers
Inflation spillover	$20–45B	$12–30B	Non-US CPI pass-through; EM currency and import-cost pressure

Gross against net. Gross is what buyers paid above the pre-war baseline. Net removes the producer-side transfer — money that moved from consumers to Riyadh, Moscow and Houston is a redistribution, not a destruction, and counting it as pure loss would be the same inflation this page exists to refuse. The honest figure sits in the gap between the two, and the gap is stated rather than resolved. Channels re-based Jul 29 after Brent gave back roughly 16% across three sessions to settle near $84; the cumulative bands move under 2% on that, because 148 of the 151 days are already booked.

Modeled · non-US · adds $0 to the US counter No live ticker · cumulative band only

The Question Everyone Asks

Has this war cost a trillion dollars?

Not yet, on the strictest reading. Almost certainly yes, on the reading most people mean. Both answers are below, with the arithmetic that separates them, because a page that counts honestly has to be willing to talk itself down as well as up.

Bucket	Range	Confidence
United States — direct, indirect, cost of capital (the counter above)	~$225B	Modeled
Rest of world — economic (Ledger 5, gross)	$260–455B	Modeled
Israel — direct military, air defense, interceptor expenditure	$20–45B	Estimated · no official figure
Iran — destroyed materiel plus output contraction	$60–150B	Estimated · no disclosure
Gulf states — infrastructure damage, defense surge, LNG disruption	$25–60B	Estimated · partial disclosure
Running gross, all parties, day 151	$590B – $935B	Modeled
US long tail not yet booked — veterans' lifetime care, munitions replenishment, base repair, debt service	$275–775B	Projected · decades
All-in, all parties, including lifetime	$0.9T – $1.7T	Projected

$0US $225BALL PARTIES $590–935B$1T

The verdict

$1 trillion is not a projection. It is a date.

At the current all-parties gross accrual of roughly $2.5B a day — US direct burn, plus a crude premium still running $16 above the pre-war baseline, plus freight and gas — the trillion-dollar mark is crossed between late August and late December 2026, most likely in October. That is not an argument about whether the number is big. It is a countdown that runs whether or not anyone signs anything, because the largest single channel is a price differential that persists while the strait stays shut.

The one reading on which a trillion has already been passed is the lifetime one — and note that this is not a new claim on this page. The drivers table below has carried $500B–$1T as the long-run all-in US figure for months. Add the rest of the world and the lifetime total clears a trillion comfortably. What changed today is not the arithmetic. It is that the horizon shortened.

What would make this wrong. Three things, and each is checkable. If the crude premium collapses to under $5/bbl above baseline and holds — Brent sustained below $73 — the daily accrual falls by roughly two-thirds and the crossing slides past mid-2027. If a signed transit arrangement is published and war-risk cover reprices under 1% of hull value, the freight and trade channels compress by more than half. And if a Pentagon comptroller figure lands materially below the modeled ~$400M/day active rate, Ledger 1 and everything downstream of it comes down with it. None of those has happened as of Jul 29. The counter does not move on hope in either direction.

Synthesis across all ledgers · adds $0 to the US counter · confidence: low–moderate on the belligerent-state rows

The Cost That Does Not Reverse · Human Cost

The number that does not fall when oil falls

The dollar total above is the quoted number — it falls when oil falls. This is the number that does not reverse. Killed and wounded are tracked separately by the reporting bodies; wounded is shown only where an official body discloses it. Iran releases no reliable count, so the documented floor understates the real toll — almost certainly by tens of thousands.

Toll	Killed	Wounded	Source · as of	Confidence
US service members	17	430+	CENTCOM / AP (Jul 21)	Official
— US injured this month (since Jul 7)	—	~100	Pentagon / Parnell (Jul 20)	Official
Seafarers / mariners	12 killed or missing	2+	Hormuz crisis tallies (Jul 22)	Compiled
Commercial vessel incidents	52 reported	—	IMO, via UANI (Jul 10)	Compiled
Yemen — Saudi strikes on Hodeidah	not yet counted	not yet counted	al-Masirah (Jul 25); Riyadh silent	New front
All fronts (compiled)	floor only	undisclosed	Iran & others undisclosed	Undercounted

Three US service members were killed in the week before — two at Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base on Jul 17, one in northern Iraq on Jul 18 — the first American combat deaths since March. The Pentagon now says nearly 100 service members have been injured this month alone, since Jul 7 (Parnell, Jul 20); it reports 96% returned to duty, mostly minor concussions, though independent all-injury tallies including ballistic-strike TBIs run higher. The maritime toll is climbing on its own: across the Hormuz crisis, roughly 17 merchant ships damaged, 7 abandoned, 2 captured, a tugboat sunk, and 12 seafarers killed or missing, against 52 commercial-vessel incidents reported to the IMO across the Gulf, the strait and the Gulf of Oman. This week added more: multiple Greek-owned Dynacom tankers struck inside 24 hours, an oil products tanker and a crude tanker hit off Oman and off Dibba in the UAE, an oil and chemical tanker hit off Limah, and a Saudi-flagged products tanker damaged in the Red Sea on Jul 25 with all crew reported safe. No updated official casualty figure has been published since Jul 21, so the US rows above are held at their last disclosed values rather than extrapolated — and the new Yemeni front opened by Saudi strikes on Hodeidah has no count at all. The wounded outlast the war longest of all. Every figure here is institutional, sourced, and dated.

The drivers, line by line

Every figure flagged by confidence

The labeling is the point — official numbers are a floor, the rest are models with real error bars.

Driver	Figure	Confidence
Pentagon cumulative direct (May 12)	$29B	Official
— of which: hardware repair / replace	~$24B	Official
US aircraft lost or damaged	42	CRS
Regional base damage	not yet counted	Pending
Energy / inflation drag to households	~$100–132B	Modeled
Brent crude	~$84–88.36 (Jul 28) · −16% in 3 sessions, worst since Apr 2020	ICE · sources differ by contract
Brent monthly range	$70.14–$95.30 (Jun 28–Jul 27)	ICE
Brent 2026 peak / low	$126 (Apr) / <$70 (Jul 1)	ICE/EIA
WTI (Sep contract)	~$79–82.61 (Jul 27–28)	NYMEX
US avg gasoline	$4.00/gal (Jul 20 — last verified)	AAA
Henry Hub gas	~$2.90 (six-week low)	EIA
EU gas (context, not a US cost line)	€64.02/MWh (+57% 4wk, +93.8% y/y)	Trading Economics
Ceasefire / MoU status	Iran rejected Oman equal-split plan Jul 28; counter-proposed Iranian-waters routing	Contested
Strait status	IRGC closed; US: Omani corridor open (escort)	Contested
Hormuz transits, daily	15 (Jul 19) vs ~88 baseline	IMF PortWatch
Hormuz transits, weekly	78 (Jul 13–19) vs 174 prior week	Lloyd's List
— of which no Iranian nexus	25 vs 108 prior week	Lloyd's List
Tankers running dark	~84	Single-source
US strike campaign	suspended over the weekend of Jul 25–26; ~80 strikes cumulative	CENTCOM
New fronts	Yanbu & Jizan struck; Hodeidah struck; CPC halted	Escalating
Bypass at risk (East–West Petroline)	~2.5–3.5 mbpd via Yanbu	Modeled
US service members injured, this month	~100 since Jul 7	Pentagon
Fed funds rate	3.50–3.75% · decision today, Jul 29, 2:00 PM ET · hold priced 62–64%	FOMC / CME
Treasury yields	18-month highs (wk to Jul 24)	Treasury
Equities (Jul 28 close)	S&P 7,428.78 · Nasdaq 24,876.91 · Dow 52,747.32 · VIX 18.31	Exchanges
Magnificent 7, single session (Jul 23)	−$797B (−4.8%), worst since Apr 2025	Bloomberg
New US tariffs (confounds inflation attribution)	10–12.5% on ~60 partners, eff. Jul 24	Section 301
Cost-of-capital drag, annual	~$48B	Modeled
War-risk premium, share of hull value	3–10% vs 0.25% pre-war · ~6,000 seafarers stranded	IMO / brokers
Long-run all-in, US only (lifetime)	$500B–$1T	Projected
Rest-of-world economic cost (Ledger 5)	$260–455B gross · $115–230B net	Modeled
All parties, running gross, day 151	$590B–$935B	Modeled

How this clock is calculated

This is a transparent client-side model, not a live government feed. It computes elapsed time from Feb 28, 2026 and applies published daily-burn and modeled drag rates. It shows its own math so you can disagree with it.

Ledger 1 (Direct): phased burn — $1.88B/day days 1–6 (Pentagon briefing), ~$500M/day sustained to the Apr 8 ceasefire, ~$95M/day standby through Jul 8, then a modeled ~$400M/day active rate from Jul 8 as the ceasefire collapsed into a nightly strike campaign — above standby, below the opening surge, held there until a comptroller figure exists. Unchanged as of Jul 26 despite CENTCOM skipping its Jul 24 post: one missing announcement is not a disclosed rate, and the model does not move on inference in either direction. Conservative: it does not step up for the expanded target set, the Gulf of Oman blockade enforcement, or the Red Sea front. Reproduces ~$40–45B, consistent with the $29B May 12 official floor plus disclosed and modeled burn since.
Ledger 2 (Indirect): modeled energy/inflation drag accruing from the early spike, capped at the Moody's/Dallas Fed ~$132B band as an in-year figure already worked into prices. Oil's return toward pre-war levels does not unwind costs already passed through.
Ledger 3 (Cost of capital): modeled in-year drag of ~$48B/yr from the rate curve repriced during the acute phase. The geopolitical premium had largely unwound by early July; the ceasefire collapse and Hormuz reclosure have re-widened it. Represents in-year drag booked, with fresh marginal repricing on the escalation.
Ledger 4 (Opportunity): a translation only — divides the running grand total by public per-unit reference costs. Adds nothing to the total.
Per-citizen / per-taxpayer: divided by 342,000,000 citizens and 135,000,000 taxpayers (stated assumptions).

To make it truly live: replace the rate constants at the top of the script with a fetch to a data file or API you control (Pentagon comptroller, CSIS, Penn Wharton, Dallas Fed, Treasury). The display layer swaps the source in without touching the UI.

Sources: Pentagon comptroller testimony, CRS, CSIS, Penn Wharton Budget Model, Dallas Fed, Moody's Analytics, US Treasury, EIA/ICE, Trading Economics. Human-cost figures: US Central Command, CRS, and national health authorities — official figures labeled; estimates and ranges labeled as such.