Trump asks Congress for $87bn, mostly for 'urgent' Iran war costs

The White House has asked lawmakers to approve $87.6bn (£66.5bn), mostly for "urgent needs" connected with the US war on Iran, a day after Congress passed a resolution rebuking the military action.

The bulk of the funding - $67bn - is for the Defense Department, including $21bn for munitions, $17.3bn for operational costs and $12.1bn for classified programmes, said the White House.

The other money is for unrelated measures including $11bn for US farmers and $1.4bn to tackle the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.

But the proposal faces an uphill battle in Congress as the Iran conflict is unpopular with voters and midterm elections loom this November.

The White House Office of Management and Budget sent the formal request for the funds on Wednesday in a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.

"Most of this request will address urgent needs related to Operation Epic Fury (OEF)," says the letter, referring to the Iran war.

The request includes about $300m to bolster security at US embassies and diplomatic outposts in the Middle East and South Asia after some of them came under attack earlier in the war.

Washington and Tehran are currently observing a ceasefire, but the White House budget office letter notes that the Pentagon needs to "rebuild stocks" after its military strikes.

It comes as Republicans in Congress have expressed scepticism about a peace plan that Trump agreed last week with Iran.

Earlier on Wednesday, the president held a tense meeting with Senate Republicans, after he abruptly called off a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill.

At the closed-door luncheon on Capitol Hill, he complained about Tuesday's largely symbolic vote on a war powers resolution in the Republican-controlled Senate to block his war in Iran, reports the BBC's US partner CBS.

It was the first resolution of its kind to clear Congress instructing a president to end a military action since the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted.

Even before Wednesday's meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump had signalled his dissatisfaction with Tuesday's war powers vote.

He described it as "poorly timed and meaningless" and labelled four Republican senators who voted along with Democrats as "losers".

One of the dissenting Republicans, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, told journalists he and the president had a shouting match in the closed-door meeting.

"I stood and said, 'You have not told the American people what's going on,'" he recalled. "This was supposed to last four weeks, it's lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved."

In a meeting earlier on Wednesday with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump expressed his annoyance with the war powers vote.

"We had four Republican senators and all Democrats... they want to lose the war because they're stupid," he said.

Last month, the Pentagon's chief financial officer Jules Hurst told a congressional panel the war had cost about $29bn so far.

But defence analysts and lawmakers say this estimate does not reflect the scale of the conflict's financial and economic damage.