The US has spent a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel

WASHINGTON – The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to an escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for the Costs of War project Brown University, which was released Monday. the anniversary of Hamas’s attacks on Israel.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, another $4.86 billion has been poured into intensified U.S. military operations in the region, researchers say in their findings first provided to The Associated Press. This includes the cost of a naval-led campaign to suppress attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying out the attacks in solidarity with the Iran-backed group Hamas.

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

The financial toll comes on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took others hostage a year ago. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count.

At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel significantly expanded its attacks in that country in late September.

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

Here’s a look at where some of the American taxpayers’ money went:

Record military aid to Israel

Israel — a protege of the United States since its founding in 1948 — is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, receiving $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report said.

Still, the $17.9 billion spent since October 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in a single year. The US committed to providing billions in military aid each year to Israel and Egypt when they signed their 1979 US-brokered peace treaty, an agreement since the Obama administration capped the annual amount for Israel at 3.8 billion through 2028 dollar has been established.

U.S. assistance since the start of the Gaza war includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in withdrawals from U.S. stockpiles and discarded used equipment.

Much of the American weapons delivered this year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker busters and precision-guided bombs.

Spending ranges from $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to money for guns and jet fuel, the study said.

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

They cited the Biden administration’s efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.

The funding of the US’s most important ally during a war that has taken a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long weighed heavily in American politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”

US military operations in the Middle East

The Biden administration has increased its military strength in the region since the start of the war in Gaza, aiming to deter and respond to any possible attacks on Israeli and US forces.

These additional operations will cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including increased U.S. military assistance to Egypt and other partners in the region.

The US had 34,000 troops in the Middle East on the day 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 an attack attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.

The number of U.S. ships and aircraft deployed – aircraft carrier strike groups, an amphibious group, fighter squadrons and air defense batteries – in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has varied throughout the year.

The Pentagon has said that another carrier strike group is heading to Europe soon and that this could boost troop totals again if there are two aircraft carriers in the region at the same time again.

The fight against the Houthis

The US military has been deployed since the start of the war to try to counter escalated attacks by the Houthis, an armed faction that controls Yemen’s capital and northern areas, and has targeted merchant ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza shot. The researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the US an “unexpectedly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.”

Houthis have continued to launch attacks on ships crossing the critical trade route, prompting U.S. strikes on launch sites and other targets. The campaign has become the most intense naval battle the Navy has faced since World War II.

“The US has deployed multiple aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, and expensive multimillion-dollar missiles against cheap Iranian-made Houthi drones costing $2,000,” the authors said.

On Friday, the US military attacked more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, going after weapons systems, bases and other equipment, officials said.

The researchers’ calculations included at least $55 million in additional combat compensation as a result of the intensified operations in the region.