The United States has spent a record of at least US$17.9 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 for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
Advertisement
An additional US$4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since the October 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings.
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, this one 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.
Advertisement
Israel – a protégé of the United States since its 1948 founding – is the biggest recipient of US military aid in history, getting US$251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.