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Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy says the Pentagon blocked him from visiting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar during a trip to the Middle East, saying the Trump administration is working to bury what the war with Iran has actually cost.

Getting into it: Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the first congressional Democrat to set foot in the region since the war kicked off in February, traveled to Qatar and Saudi Arabia and said he wanted to see firsthand the damage the war has done to US facilities. Al Udeid is the largest US base in the region and the forward headquarters of US Central Command, and it has been repeatedly hit by Iranian strikes. The Pentagon wouldn’t brief him on the war during the trip either, he said, and military officials at the US embassy were under orders not to talk to him.

He credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio with helping arrange the trip, including meetings with Qatar’s emir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and said two Iranian strikes left part of the US embassy in Riyadh with “significant damage,” which he saw in person.

“This trip confirmed for me that there is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Murphy said. “I’ve never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate and it’s part of a deliberate campaign of obfuscation that my Republican colleagues in Congress should demand an end to.”

A senior Pentagon official said Murphy’s team got word ahead of time that the department wouldn’t back a visit to the base under a March directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth limiting travel in the region, and that “the Department applies the Secretary’s guidance evenly.” The Pentagon has faced growing criticism from lawmakers in both parties for not sharing more about what the war is costing, how it’s being run and how many troops have died. The war has cost more than $45 billion, and while the military puts the US death toll at 19, the Washington Post reported last month that at least 23 service members have died. A Pentagon inspector general report in September found “hundreds of buildings and structures” at US bases across eight countries in the region took damage or were flattened in Iranian attacks.

This all comes as former top commanders question whether the US should even keep its bases in the Gulf, with former Central Command chief Gen. Frank McKenzie saying “no one in their right mind” would put the command’s forward headquarters about 100 miles from Iran at Al Udeid.