U.S. Military Industrial Complex: The Real Winner of the Iran War | POV

While missiles fly over the Gulf, the most reliable beneficiary of the Iran war has never fired a single shot

In Short

• The US Military Industrial Complex benefits most from the Iran war
• RTX profits from Tomahawk missile demand, stock rises significantly
• Pentagon requests increased military budget, bypasses Congress for arms deals

Every war has a winner. And it is almost never the country that started it. The winner of the Iran war is not Iran, whose military capabilities have been substantially degraded and whose economy is under renewed sanction pressure. It is not Israel, which has achieved tactical gains but no stated strategic objective. It is not even the United States as a nation, whose taxpayers are paying close to a billion dollars a day and whose ordinary citizens are absorbing a 60 per cent rise in oil prices at every pump and supermarket they visit.

The winner is a specific, well-funded, politically connected industry that operates out of Virginia. It got richer from Ukraine. It got richer from Iraq. It got richer from Afghanistan. And right now, in real time, it is getting richer from Iran.

The United States Military Industrial Complex. And this time, the numbers are so large they deserve to be said out loud.

The Tomahawk economy

Start with 850. That is the number of Tomahawk cruise missiles the United States fired in the first month of Operation Epic Fury, according to the Washington Post, confirmed by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. It is the largest single-conflict use of Tomahawks in American history, exceeding the 802 fired during the entire major combat phase of the Iraq War. Each replacement costs 3.6 million dollars. That is 3.1 billion dollars in Tomahawk missiles alone, consumed in 30 days.

The question nobody in Washington will answer directly is a simple one. Who pays to replace them? The American taxpayer does. The US Navy is now requesting a 1,200 per cent increase in Tomahawk procurement for 2027, 785 missiles for 3 billion dollars, according to Navy Times. That order goes to Raytheon, which is RTX, whose stock rose 67 per cent in the last year.

The cycle is not complicated. The war empties the stockpile. The taxpayer funds the replacement. The contractor pockets the margin. Repeat.

RTX posted 88.6 billion dollars in 2025 revenues, up 10 per cent year-on-year. Its Raytheon division's profits spiked 22 per cent on Patriot and Tomahawk demand alone. The company is projecting 93 billion dollars in 2026 revenues. Its confirmed order backlog sits at 268 billion dollars. It has already expanded its missile integration facility in Alabama by 50 per cent.

Lockheed Martin's stock rose nearly 40 per cent since the start of 2026. It signed a deal in January to quadruple THAAD interceptor production from 96 to 400 per year. Each THAAD interceptor costs 12.77 million dollars. In one documented incident during the war, 11 Patriot missiles, at up to 4 million dollars each, were fired to intercept a single Iranian missile. The Iranian missile cost a fraction of what it took to shoot it down.

Who paid for those 11 Patriot missiles? The American taxpayer. Who is restocking them? Raytheon. Who made money on both ends of that transaction? RTX.

A Melius Research analyst told clients without embarrassment that "defence spending was already set to surge in 2026 and a protracted war with Iran will make the spending more urgent and less controversial." MarketWatch was even more direct. "War can be good for business." The greatest threat to investors in these firms, it is worth noting, is peace. When peace talks begin, defence stocks sell. The financial architecture of the Military Industrial Complex is built on the requirement for sustained conflict.

The emergency that bypassed democracy

The Pentagon is now asking Congress for 200 billion dollars in supplemental war funding, on top of a proposed 1.5 trillion dollar military budget for 2027, a 66 per cent increase over this year's 901 billion dollar defence budget. The Department of Defence is the only federal agency in the United States that has never once passed a financial audit. But the money keeps flowing.

On 19 March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked an emergency waiver bypassing mandatory congressional review to approve 16.5 billion dollars in arms sales to the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan. The UAE received 8.4 billion dollars in drones, missiles, radar systems and F-16 upgrades. Kuwait received 8 billion dollars in air defence radar systems. Jordan received 70.5 million dollars in emergency aircraft support. Then came an additional 7 billion dollars in weapons to the UAE through channels that require no public disclosure under US arms export rules, according to the Wall Street Journal. Twenty-three billion dollars. Approved in 48 hours. Congress bypassed entirely.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth summarised the philosophy at a Pentagon briefing on 20 March. "Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys." He did not specify who benefits from that money most consistently.

The logic of the loop is worth spelling out. The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were attacked by Iran because US military bases sit on their soil. Iran's missiles landed on their infrastructure. They now need more American missiles to defend against Iranian missiles, paid for with their own oil money, delivered by American defence contractors. Hegseth praised those same Gulf states for being, in his words, "squarely in our orbit." That is one way to describe a customer base.

The next war is already being planned

The Pentagon has held preliminary talks with GM CEO Mary Barra, Ford CEO Jim Farley, GE Aerospace and Oshkosh about converting car and industrial factories to weapons production, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hegseth has framed this as putting the United States on a "wartime footing." The last time America asked Detroit to stop making cars and start making weapons was 1942. They are not preparing to end this war. They are preparing for the next one.

Europe is doing exactly what the Virginia sales offices hoped for. The EU spent 343 billion euros on defence in 2024, a 19 per cent surge and a new record. Poland alone is spending 4.8 per cent of GDP on defence in 2026, the highest ratio in NATO, outspending even the United States. According to the Bruegel Institute, Poland swallowed 55 billion dollars in US arms contracts in just two years; F-35s, Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles, all American. America's allies are terrified. And terrified allies are the defence industry's most reliable customers.

The conflict of interest at the ceasefire table

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and part of the US delegation for the Iran ceasefire negotiations in Islamabad, runs a private equity firm called Affinity Partners. Bloomberg reported that its assets hit 6.2 billion dollars by the end of 2025, up nearly 30 per cent in one year. The anchor investor is Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which committed 2 billion dollars. Qatar and Abu Dhabi followed with hundreds of millions more. In March 2026, the House Oversight Committee sent a formal letter to Affinity noting the Saudis appeared to have "significantly increased" their commitments to "curry favour" with Kushner in anticipation of his father-in-law's return to power.

This is the man sitting at the ceasefire table. Managing 6.2 billion dollars backed almost entirely by the Gulf governments that just spent 23 billion dollars on American weapons. When the negotiations conclude, when the treaties are signed, when the missiles are delivered, at what point does a conflict of interest simply become the cost of doing business?

The final number

On 15 April, the same day Putin admitted his economy had contracted 1.8 per cent in the first two months of 2026, the same day Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the expiration of Iran and Russia oil waivers, the S&P 500 hit an all-time record high. It closed at 7,022.95. The Nasdaq also hit a record, surging over 1.5 per cent in a single session.

Oil prices remain approximately 60 per cent higher than at the start of 2026. Ordinary Americans are paying a conflict tax on everything that moves by boat, plane or truck. And Wall Street is at an all-time high.

Those two things happening simultaneously are not a coincidence. They are a system. A system in which war transfers wealth upward, to defence contractors, to private equity firms with Gulf backing, to the politicians who approve the budgets, while the cost travels entirely in the other direction.

850 Tomahawk missiles fired. 3.1 billion dollars in 30 days. A 1.5 trillion dollar military budget was requested for next year. Car factories being converted to weapons plants. And the S&P 500 at an all-time high.

Wars are sold as battles of principle. And in the trenches, they often are.

But from the boardroom, war is a ledger. The most profitable ledger ever written. For the same people. Every single time.

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