US spends record amount on military aid to Israel in last year

The United States has spent a record amount of at least 17.9 billion dollars (£13.6 billion) on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report.

The research for Brown University’s Costs of War project was published on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.

An additional 4.86 billion dollars (£3.7 billion) 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 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.

Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. 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 combatants in its count.

At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes 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 assessed the full costs of US wars since the September 11 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D Hartung and Stephen Semler.

Israel is the biggest recipient of US military aid in history, getting 251.2 billion dollars (£191.4 billion) in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.

Even so, the 17.9 billion (£13.6 billion) spent in the last year, in inflation-adjusted dollars, 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 their 1979 US-brokered peace treaty and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at 3.8 billion dollars (£2.9 billion) through 2028.

The US aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least 4.4 billion dollars (£3.5 billion) in drawdowns from US stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.

Unlike the United States publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped Israel, so the 17.9 billion dollars for the 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 manoeuvring”.

The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces.

Those additional operations cost at least 4.86 billion dollars (£3.7 billion), the report said, not including beefed-up US military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.

The US had 34,000 forces in the Middle East on 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. The total is now around 43,000.

The US military has deployed since the start of the war to try to counter escalated strikes by the Houthis, an armed faction that controls Yemen’s capital and northern areas, and has been firing on merchant ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza.

The researchers called the 4.86 billion dollars cost to the US an “unexpectedly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.”

Houthis have kept launching attacks on ships traversing the critical trade route, drawing US strikes on launch sites and other targets. The campaign has become the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.

The researchers’ calculations included at least 55 million dollars (£41.9 million) in additional combat pay from the intensified operations in the region.