Images Allegedly Showing Iranian Fattah 2 Ballistic Missile Impacting Hardened Target in Israel
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps considering attacks on U.S. military facilities in Europe if the ongoing war effort further escalations, according to a report by the Financial Times. Two unidentified Iranian sources reportedly told the paper that U.S. bases in countries including Bulgaria have been assessed as potential targets as part of contingency plans for expanding the conflict. The development would represent a major geographical expansion of the conflict and could put U.S. forces across Europe on a higher state of alert.
Failed Patriot Missile Interception Over Al Udeid Air Base (left) and Patriot System at Al Udeid on February 28, 2026
Attacks on European bases would be particularly significant due to the extreme depletion of air defences across the continent, primarily due to donations to support the Ukrainian war effort, and the prioritisation of U.S. air defence stockpiles to protect facilities in the Middle East. Iranian drone and missile strikes have left U.S. bases across the Middle East unusable, including the United States’ largest overseas military facility Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. This has forced the U.S. to heavily concentrate its operations in Israel, where remaining air defences are particularly densely concentrated, and in Eastern Europe and Turkey which Iran for political reasons has not yet targeted.
Satellite Image Showing Destruction at Al Udeid Airbase
The United States relies on a vast network of military installations across allied European states, which support operations throughout the continent, the Middle East and Africa, providing airfields, logistics hubs, intelligence capabilities and aerial-refuelling infrastructure. Any Iranian attempt to strike them would therefore have implications far beyond the immediate military damage caused. This could include overlap with the Russian-Ukrainian war, where supplies and personnel moving into Ukraine rely on networks of bases across Europe. While Russia has reportedly already provided targeting support and intelligence to support Iranian strikes on American positions in the Middle East, attacks on targets in Europe that could benefit its position more directly could result in an expansion of this support.
Iranian Ballistic Missile Strike U.S. Airbase in Jordan
Iran has already demonstrated an ability and willingness to attempt attacks at considerable distances. In March, Tehran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles towards Diego Garcia, the remote Indian Ocean base jointly used by the United States and United Kingdom, over 3,500 kilometres from Iran in an apparent show of force. Diego Garcia is considerably farther from Iran than most American installations in Europe, meaning that European bases would be substantially more accessible and could be targeted with much lower value missiles and drones.
Iranian Khebar Ballistic Missile Launch
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has progressively refined its missile and drone operations to better exploit weaknesses in American air defences, while simultaneously forcing Washington to more rapidly expend increasingly scarce and costly interceptor missiles. Sources cited by The New York Times reported that this involved using increasingly sophisticated combinations of missiles and drones to complicate the U.S. defensive response. Iran has made use of a wide range of missile and drone types to engage targets, with the highest priority targets struck with more complex and costly missile types, such as the Fattah 2, which integrates a hypersonic glide vehicle that is nearly impossible to intercept. The Israeli paper Haaretz in late March confirmed that 80 percent of Iranian missiles launched against Israeli targets were impacting successfully, indicating that the much less well defended U.S. bases in Europe could be highly vulnerable.
The total debt of the United States has surpassed $40 trillion for the first time in history, according to a Department of the Treasury update on Wednesday.
Ballooning debt, especially during President Donald Trump’s second term, which began in January last year, has been raising concerns about a looming fiscal crisis for some time, with economists fearing a toxic combination of heavy borrowing, increased spending and lower taxes could land the world’s biggest economy in crisis.
Fast-rising US debt comes despite Trump’s championing of cost-cutting and efficiency as a hallmark of his second term, with the nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashing between 250,000 and 350,000 federal jobs and cutting global aid since the start of last year.
In May 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that the US would reach the $40 trillion mark in 2028.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a budget watchdog, said in a statement, “$40 trillion of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another.”
Here’s what we know about why US debt is rising, and why it matters:
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with technology leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, August 19, 2026, in Washington, DC [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]
How fast is debt rising?
US debt is growing much faster in the 2020s than it did in previous decades.
Total debt, which includes debt owed to others and what the government owes itself, has doubled since January 2017, when Trump began his first term as president. US debt at the time was $19.95 trillion.
During Trump’s first term, public debt rose by $7.8 trillion, most of it because of the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Since his return to office in January 2025, debt has grown by $3.8 trillion, amounting to a total of $11.6 trillion across his two terms so far.
Under the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025, the government continued to borrow and spend heavily in response to the pandemic; debt rose by $8.4 trillion.
US debt hit $39 trillion in March this year, meaning it took fewer than five months to pile on an additional $1 trillion in debt.
For comparison, it took close to 200 years for total US debt to cross $1 trillion for the first time in 1981, according to analysis by CRFB, although $1 trillion in 1981 would be worth $3.67 trillion in real terms today, after inflation is taken into account.
The CBO estimates that debt will rise from 101 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 to 120 percent in 2036. That is well above the previous US record of 106 percent after World War II.
Why is debt ballooning?
Crisis spending
There have been two major crises in nearly two decades, during which governments have needed to borrow and increase spending.
The 2007-09 recession was the first crisis, while the second was the 2020-23 COVID-19 pandemic, which is linked to about one-third of the debt run up since 2017, as borrowing under both the Trump and Joe Biden presidencies intensified.
Tax revenue too low
Analysts say another reason for rising borrowing is that tax and other revenues are not keeping up with spending, especially as the US is spending more to fund pensions and healthcare for an ageing population.
Experts say Democratic and Republican administrations alike have failed to rein in spending or raise taxes to close this gap.
The US spends about $7 trillion annually, with about 60 percent of that going to Social Security Administration (SSA) payments, health insurance including Medicare and Medicaid, and veterans’ care.
Revenues are inadequate to meet these expenses. For example, in July, the US brought in $334bn in individual income taxes, social insurance, corporate taxes and others, according to the Treasury Department.
However, it paid out $766bn, almost double the revenue, in social security, health insurance, national defence and interest payments.
Rising interest rates
Interest rates remained low until the pandemic hit, at which point the Federal Reserve raised rates to fight inflation.
Now, the US is paying about $1.1 trillion annually to service its debt, slightly more than it spends on defence. In the first 10 months of the 2026 budget year, interest costs have also eclipsed health insurance spending and are now the second-largest slice of spending after pensions. It spends between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion per year on federal retirement benefits – Social Security – and state or local public pensions combined, according to data from analysis group USA Facts.
What tax cuts has Trump introduced
Despite these rising costs, Trump has implemented deep tax cuts for businesses, starting with his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 during his first term, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
He followed that up in 2025 with his “One Beautiful Bill Act”, permanently entrenching the 2017 law. Although the bill also cut Medicaid spending by 12 percent, it raised the debt ceiling by nearly $5 trillion to allow for this.
At present, individual income taxes make up roughly half of federal revenues, compared with only 9 percent from corporate income taxes.
In between the two Trump presidencies, the Biden administration also spent heavily on infrastructure investment and clean energy subsidies.
Who is the US in debt to?
Public debt borrowed from domestic and foreign investors makes up 80 percent – roughly $32 trillion – of the gross debt, according to Treasury data.
About $21 trillion of this public debt is owed domestically, to a variety of creditors including the Federal Reserve ($4.528 trillion), which buys and sells Treasury securities to influence federal interest rates and manage the money supply, according to analysis by the Peter G Peterson Foundation.
Other creditors are mutual funds ($5.195 trillion), pension funds ($1.135 trillion), state and local governments ($1.636 trillion), commercial banks and depository Institutions ($2.083 trillion) and other corporate and individual lenders ($6.660 trillion).
Internationally, the US is in debt to several countries and private investors. In 1970, total foreign debt holders accounted for 5 percent of gross debt, but by 2025, they made up 32 percent. That means while they are helping boost US economic activity, more of the country’s income is being sent abroad in the form of interest payments.
By 2025, the US owed Japan $1.203 trillion, the United Kingdom ($889bn), China ($683bn), as well as more than 30 other entities.
Separately, another 20 percent of the gross national debt – about $8 trillion – is owed intra-governmentally and therefore does not affect overall finances.
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Could the Iran war trigger the next debt shock?
What does rising debt mean for the US economy?
Analysts say the rising debt could potentially create an economic crisis for the US, in the form of hyperinflation or higher interest rates, for example, if it goes unchecked.
As more debt piles on, there is a growing risk that private investment will fall because of safety concerns, and as a consequence, economic growth could slow down.
Lawmakers may eventually be forced to respond with painful austerity measures such as higher taxes, analysts say. Social safety net programmes could also be at risk.
It could take years to resolve, experts warn, and the consequences could be intergenerational, with young people forced to pay more for many years.
The rest of the world would be affected too: the US is a cornerstone of the global economy, and a crisis there will likely hurt global markets.
The first correcting step, MacGuineas of CRFB said, is to commit to zero new borrowing immediately. Lawmakers must also set up a bipartisan fiscal commission to scrutinise the issues, she said. With a commitment to keep taxes low and reduce spending, while also engaging in a hugely expensive war in the Middle East, this may be difficult to achieve, analysts say.
