President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has made a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the U.S. to stop sending $4 billion in aid annually to Israel.
It was not immediately clear which exact funding Trump meant.
Trump said that he and Netanyahu “made a deal months ago that we’re stopping” and that the money would get “cut off at the end of the year.”
Trump said in a phone interview with “Fox & Friends” that the idea was Netanyahu’s — Netanyahu has previously floated tapering American aid over the next decade. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment Tuesday.
“We’ll help Israel if they need it — you know they’ve been a great ally,” Trump said, adding that the Israeli government was “fine with it, because, you know, they have become a very successful country” and “they don’t need” the money.
Trump was speaking while voters were heading to the polls for the midterm elections. U.S. military aid to Israel and Israel’s use of American weapons in Gaza and the West Bank have been among the most contentious issues during the campaign.
Trump appeared to acknowledge a political dimension to the decision, saying, “The left uses the $4 billion payment that everybody knows about, when it’s no secret, as a signal of unfairness, and we can’t allow that to happen.”
“I don’t like that, because, you know, it’s too easy. It’s almost too easy a target,” he said.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump added, referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic Michigan Senate nominee, who has forcefully criticized Israel and U.S. foreign policy during the campaign.
The price of Brent crude oil slid 3%, to $101 a barrel, in response to Trump’s comments, its lowest in more than three weeks, as investors and traders viewed the comments as possibly further evidence that the Iran war could be ended without escalation. It ticked back up to $103 at noon ET.
The initial drop added to oil’s biggest one-day decline in three months Monday, after Trump told NBC News that he was not planning to attack Iran after the midterms.
Complex aid picture
The U.S. has agreed to give Israel $3.8 billion annually as part of a “memorandum of understanding” signed in 2016 during the Obama administration. The agreement, which took effect in October 2018, specifies $3.3 billion a year in military financing grants and $500 million a year for joint missile defense. It is due to expire in 2028.
Almost all of that money must be spent on purchases from the U.S.
But the total amount is much higher, with American military aid to Israel greatly boosted following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza.
In the two years after Oct. 7, the U.S. spent at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel, according to a paper by William D. Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank based in Washington.
According to the paper for Brown University’s Costs of War project, some of the $21.7 billion comes in the form of foreign military financing, which is approved by the State Department and implemented by the Defense Department. It pays for weapons that originate in the U.S. and are transferred to other governments.
Another tranche is offshore procurement, in which the U.S. gives Israel funds for it to bolster its own military. Other funds are used to replenish U.S. weapons stocks supplied to Israel, as well as “special funding” for ammunition and arms production capacity, the paper said.
“U.S. arms have been central to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Police operations in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond,” the study said, including “Israel’s entire inventory of combat capable aircraft,” which, as of the study’s publication in October last year, was 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s and 39 F-35s.
In January, Netanyahu said he hoped to “taper off” American military aid over the next decade. On Tuesday, Trump said halting the money by the end of this year was Netanyahu’s idea.
“Can I be honest with you? He brought it up,” Trump added. “He said, ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
Trump and Netanyahu launched the war on Iran this year, and munitions in the U.S. have been increasingly depleted as a result.
Netanyahu’s domestic political opponents seized upon Trump’s comments.
“The fact that the defense establishment — along with the citizens of Israel — learned of a shift in the strategic relationship through the media demonstrates just how much Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct poses a real danger,” said Gadi Eisenkot, one of Netanyahu’s main political rivals, who previously was the IDF’s chief of staff.
“He can no longer be trusted, and he must be replaced,” added Eisenkot, who, as head of the Yashar party, has received backing from Netanyahu’s other opponents to replace him as prime minister following inconclusive elections last month.
Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, said, “The cessation of American aid deals a severe blow to Israel’s security and the quality of life in the country.”
“At a time when Israel’s defense expenditures have reached massive proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its stocks of offensive weaponry and when air defense capabilities have been eroded following such a prolonged war, Netanyahu has notched yet another colossal failure to his name,” Golan said.
