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As I commented before, the only way you come up a half trillion dollar cost is by saying that "oil prices going up" means the extra money spent on oil just disappears from the economy. But it doesn't. That money is recycled throughout the economy. The true cost is much lower.
A half trillion cost could also be arrived at via the cost to Iran's economy. That's probably a fairly accurate figure.
For relatively cheap we were able to almost completely neutralize Iran's navy, air force, missile program, and nuclear program. If we get regime change, the war will almost certainly be worth it. Even if we don't, I think it succeeds on the merits.
The one objection that I think holds weight is that it's been a PR nightmare. If Republicans lose the midterms, the cost will have been immense. But that's not really the way Trump thinks.
This is just the broken windows fallacy, gussied up. Higher oil prices mean that people use less oil than they would otherwise; this is a global economic distortion. The half a trillion dollars number isn't coming from naively multiplying the delta in oil prices (that gets you the trillion dollar number) but from (necessarily counterfactual) GDP deltas. I guess a hardcore climate change person could eliminate a lot of those costs by saying oil usage is a net negative.
And, although I don't expect many people to be sympathetic here to Iran's economy, massive destruction of capital is massive destruction of capital.
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