US marks 6 months of war with Iran. Here's what it means for Americans, what's ahead
ABC News · LC · trust 54/100
2:12 U.S. Navy warships transit the Arabian Sea in close formation, June 30, 2026. US Navy When the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran early this year, President Donald Trump said the war would last four to five weeks. Friday marks six months of conflict. Iran has expanded the war to several Gulf states and appears to have drawn the U.S. into yet another quagmire in the Middle East.
Here's a look back at major developments over the past six months of war and what could come next.
H ow did it start? The war began on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes that took out much of Iran’s leadership and damaged key Iranian military sites.
Speaking to the American people on the first day of attacks, Trump said war was meant to "defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime," which he said included its continued pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
President Donald Trump speaks to announce that the U.S. had begun "major combat operations" in Iran, on the day Israel and the U.S. conducted strikes on Iran, Feb. 28, 2026. The White House Months earlier, in June of 2025, the U.S. conducted penetrating strikes on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer. The administration claimed at the time that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” but would later acknowledge that enriched uranium to build a bomb still remained in Iran.
The opening days of the war were marked by a deadly airstrike on an all-girls school in southern Iran. Roughly 160 civilians, 120 of them schoolchildren, were killed. Iran has blamed the United States and Israel, but neither has assumed responsibility.
U.S. Central Command has said that it is investigating the bombing, saying the U.S. will "never" target civilians. International law prohibits the deliberate targeting of schools and universities during armed conflicts. The investigations is ongoing with few updates.
Iran retaliated immediately by attacking American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. It was able to strike vulnerable U.S. interests near the Persian Gulf using missiles and low-cost, one-way attack drones.
For months, both sides traded blows. In all, U.S. Central Command, which oversees forces in the Middle East, says it has hit more than 13,000 Iranian targets, which include military headquarters, naval ships, air defense systems and drone launch sites.
But Iran’s most consequential response came at sea when it shut down commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, turning the waterway into a household name almost overnight. The blockade choked one of the world’s most important shipping lanes and Iran dictated where the war’s frontline would be, rattling the global economy.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth provides updates on military operations in Iran during a press briefing at the Pentagon, March 19, 2026, in Arlington, Va. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images In early March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Iran was displaying “sheer desperation” in the strait and said “we have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it.”
Six months later, the goalposts appear to have shifted. Blunting the economic fallout and reopening the strait has become central to the mission.
Since the start of the war, 18 U.S. service members have died and more than 750 have been wounded . Trump has attended three dignified transfer ceremonies to honor the lives of service members lost since the war began -- two in March and one in July. He told reporters at the time it’s “one of the hardest things to do as a president.”
Beyond the sacrifice of American lives, American households have faced higher costs.
Six months in, global oil prices are up about 25% and the average gallon of gas nationwide hovers over $4 -- about a dollar more than before the war, according to GasBuddy. A Brown University energy cost tracker estimates that the average American has spent nearly $700 more in fuel prices since the war began.
Gas prices are displayed at an Exxon Gas Station in Falls Church, Va., Aug. 24, 2026. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images The president, for his part, has brushed off the concerns of rising prices, saying of oil prices at the White House in May that it’s a “very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”
Trump also said in May that Americans' financial situation was "not even a little bit" of a motivating factor for him reaching a deal to end the war in Iran.
"The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon," Trump said. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all."
The president has also insisted that once the conflict ends, oil prices will "drop like a rock."
But the war is also costing the American taxpayer. Hegseth told lawmakers this summer that the latest estimate for the cost of the war is more than $37.5 billion. Additionally, the Defense Department is asking Congress for an additional $67.1 billion for spending this year, attributing much of that demand to the war in Iran.
In April, the White House also asked Congress for a record-breaking $1.5 trillion in defense spending as part of their annual budget request for the 2027 fiscal year. The White House's request for a 42% increase in the military budget included a pay raise for troops, building more ships and a rapid procurement of 12 “critical munitions," among other things.
Polls show the Iran war is extremely unpopular.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in late August found just 31% of Americans approve of U.S. military strikes against Iran, down from 37% in March. The share of Republicans supporting the war was 69%, down from 77% in March. Wide majorities of Democrats (90%) and independents (67%) disapprove of U.S. military action in Iran.
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