US spends a record $26bn on military aid to Israel

An extra $7.1bn has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since the October 7 attacks.

Joe Biden speaks to the media during his flight returning from Israel aboard Air Force One last October 18. Picture: AFP

The US has spent a record $US17.9bn ($26.3bn) on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of Hamas’s attacks on Israel.

An extra $US4.86bn has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since the October 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said. That includes the costs of a US Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.

The report, completed before Israel opened a second front against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in late September, is one of the first tallies of estimated US costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.

The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of US wars since the September 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.

Israel, a protege of the US since its 1948 founding, is the biggest recipient of American military aid in history, getting $US251.2bn in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.

Even so, the $US17.9bn spent since last October 7 is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The US committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed the 1979 US-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $US3.8bn through to 2028.

The US aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $US4.4bn in drawdowns from US stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.

Much of the US weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.

Expenditures range from $US4bn to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defence systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.

Unlike the publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped Israel since last October 7, so the $17.9bn for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.

The US had 34,000 forces in the Middle East the day that Hamas broke through Israeli barricades around Gaza to attack. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.

AP