The US commander in the Middle East recommended stopping the Hormuz bombing before Trump paused it, and $67.1bn of munitions money is sitting in the Senate

$67.1bn is the Pentagon's share of a supplemental funding request that has not been voted on.

The Senate Appropriations Committee took evidence on the package on Tuesday 21 July, in Dirksen 106, with Chair Susan Collins presiding and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins listed as witnesses. The committee's own hearing record titles it a review of the President's supplemental funding request of 24 June 2026. Hegseth told senators at that hearing that the cost of the Iran war had risen to $37.5 billion, and that the request would sustain readiness and accelerate replacement of what has been used, according to Matthew Adams at Stars and Stripes, who reported that the full package runs to $87.6bn with $67.1bn of it for the Pentagon. The Pentagon had told Congress in May the war had cost $29 billion.

That is the money. The argument on Sunday was about whether it is needed, and it ran in two directions at once.

First reported by Barak Ravid at Axios: Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command, recommended stopping the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz because it had reached the limit of its effectiveness. Axios cites two sources with knowledge of his position, and reports that the recommendation, alongside other advisers, fed into President Donald Trump's decision on Friday to pause US strikes for the first time in two weeks. The same report says the chairman of the Joint Chiefs privately cautioned Hegseth and Trump that a shortage of air defence interceptors could hamper the ability to protect US forces and allies in the region. None of that is a document, and Axios attributes all of it to sources rather than to anyone on the record.

On the record, the opposite was being said. Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning that the military "has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be", and that he had verified it. He added that "the people that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail". He was responding to NBC News reporting, attributed to two senior US officials, that commanders are allowing some Iranian attacks through US defences in order to preserve the weapons supply. Megan Brand reported the interview for NBC News. Waltz also said the shortfall he does recognise was inherited, naming Ukraine and the campaign against the Houthis under the previous administration.

Asked whether the president had decided against escalation, Waltz said he would not go that far, and that all options remain on the table. Speaking to Fox News the same morning he described the president as giving the talks some space, according to Grace Eliza Goodwin at the BBC. An Iranian army spokesperson said on Sunday that Tehran had halted its retaliatory attacks, which this site carried earlier today.

Two things are being claimed and only one can be checked. Whether the interceptor stockpile is short is not established by anything public, and this brief does not resolve it. What is public is the request. The Pentagon has asked Congress for $67.1bn, the committee that has to move it heard the case five days ago, and it has not moved it.