CrossFireArabia
Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East, including the genocide in Gaza, without Washington’s financial support, which has exceeded $21 billion since October 2023, according to new reports.
The reports, released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University on Tuesday, found that without constant US weapons and money, Israel wouldn’t have been able to sustain its genocidal war on Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen.
“Given the scale of current and future spending, it is clear the [Israeli army] could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza or escalated their military activities throughout the region without US financing, weapons, and political support,” read the report, US Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023–September 2025, by William D Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Hartung’s findings and a companion report by Linda J Bilmes, an expert on budgeting and public finance at the Harvard Kennedy School, found that the US spent “a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting” since October 7, 2023 in military aid to Israel and in “US military operations in the region”.
They show how US support for Israel has helped it continue to wage war on multiple fronts for two years, and analysts backed up the reports’ conclusions.
The US has long been Israel’s most fervent backer. When it comes to US foreign aid, Israel is the largest annual recipient (at around $3.3bn yearly) and the largest cumulative one (more than $150bn until 2022).
Hartung’s report specifically mentions that the administrations of both US President Joe Biden and his successor, Donald Trump, committed tens of billions of dollars in arms sales agreements, including services and weapons that will be paid for in the coming years.
A second report analyzing US spending on broader Middle East activities, such as strikes on Yemen’s Houthis and Iran, puts those costs at between $9.65 billion and $12 billion since Oct. 7, 2023, including between $2 billion and $2.25 billion for the attacks in Iran and associated costs in June according to the Quds News Network.
