{"id":156085,"date":"2026-05-07T15:38:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=156085"},"modified":"2026-05-07T15:38:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:38:52","slug":"how-interest-fuels-war-the-us-iran-conflict-as-a-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/05\/07\/how-interest-fuels-war-the-us-iran-conflict-as-a-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"How interest fuels war: The US-Iran conflict as a case study"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Source: Al Hakam, London.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>In 2026, the United States reached a new turning point that revealed this cycle in real time: federal interest payments on public debt surpassed defence spending for the first time in American history.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aa.com.tr\/en\/economy\/us-interest-payments-exceed-defense-spending\/3812997\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">According to the US Treasury Department\u2019s Quarterly Statement (Q1 FY2026), net interest payments reached $270.3 billion, exceeding the Pentagon\u2019s $266.9 billion spent in the same quarter.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On an annual basis, this equals around $1.04 trillion a year. It\u2019s higher than America\u2019s entire 2025 defence budget, which stood at roughly $839 billion before the current conflict, per the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/theapothecary\/2024\/02\/07\/cbo-federal-interest-payments-now-exceed-defense-spending\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2025 baseline)<\/a>. In effect, the US now pays nearly $3 billion per day just to service existing debt. When such levels become unsustainable under peacetime budgets, war increasingly serves as an instrument to justify further borrowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interest-based debt doesn\u2019t just fund wars it structurally requires them. When debt grows faster than production, the economy must always find new areas to absorb that excess borrowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The interest trap: How compound debt forces perpetual growth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Modern financial systems are built on compound interest debts that grow continuously even without new productivity. To visualise this, consider a simple scenario: if the US borrows $200 billion at 4% interest to finance a war, the annual interest bill alone is $8 billion. Over 30 years, total repayments have risen to around $440 billion, more than doubling the original loan. This exponential expansion echoes what Albert Einstein famously described when he referred to compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world\u201d, highlighting its extraordinary power to generate growth far beyond what seems naturally possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Full Story: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alhakam.org\/how-interest-fuels-war-us-iran-conflict-case-study\">https:\/\/www.alhakam.org\/how-interest-fuels-war-us-iran-conflict-case-study<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Al Hakam, London. In 2026, the United States reached a new turning point that revealed this cycle in real time: federal interest payments on public debt surpassed defence spending for the first time in American history.\u00a0According to the US Treasury Department\u2019s Quarterly Statement (Q1 FY2026), net interest payments reached $270.3 billion, exceeding the Pentagon\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ahmadi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156086,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156085\/revisions\/156086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}