US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7: Report
Washington (Quds News Network)- The US has spent a record $17.9bn on military aid to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of the ongoing Israeli genocide war on Gaza on 7 October 2023.
An additional $4.86bn has gone into stepped-up US military operations, including the cost of a navy-led campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, the researchers say in the findings provided to the Associated Press.
The calculations were made by Linda J Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government, along with researchers William D Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Military aid to Israel
Israel is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.
Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023 is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.
Much of the U.S. weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.
Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.
It was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.
They cited the Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”
US operations in the Middle East
Those additional operations in the Middle East cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up U.S. military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.
Before the war in Gaza, the U.S. had 34,000 forces in the Middle East. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to prevent retaliation after Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.
The researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the U.S. an “unexpectedly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.”
They said the “U.S. has deployed multiple aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and expensive multimillion-dollar missiles against Houthi drones that cost $2,000.”
The researchers’ calculations included at least $55 million in additional combat pay from the intensified operations in the region.
