WASHINGTON – The United States has spent a record at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the Gaza war began and fueled the Middle East conflict, according to a report by Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday. a reminder of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Another 4.86 billion dollars went into US military activities that escalated in the region from the October 7, 2023, attack, researchers said in the first findings provided to the Associated Press. That includes the cost of a Navy-led campaign to end commercial shipping strikes by the Houthis in Yemen, which they carry out in cooperation with the Iranian-backed group Hamas.
The report – completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September – is one of the first estimates of US spending as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to end hostilities. of armed groups allied with Iran in the region.
The financial cost is higher than the cost of human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel last year and kidnapped others. Israel’s retaliation has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the area’s Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
At least 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly increased its strikes in the 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 examined the full cost of US wars since the September 11, 2001, attacks, along with other researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Here’s a look at where some of the US taxpayer money went:
Record military aid to Israel
Israel – a stronghold of the United States since its founding in 1948 – receives the largest amount of US military aid in history, receiving $251.2 billion in currency-denominated dollars since 1959, the report said.
However, the $17.9 billion spent as of Oct. 7 2023, in currency-converted dollars, is the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The US committed to providing billions in military aid to Israel and Egypt each year when it signed their US-brokered peace treaty in 1979, and the agreement since the Obama administration set the annual figure for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
US aid since the start of the Gaza war has included military funding, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in withdrawals from US reserves and handouts of used equipment.
Most of the US weapons launched during the year were artillery, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs and precision-guided munitions.
Costs range from $4 billion to refill Israel’s Iron Dome and David Sling missile defense systems to gunpowder and jet fuel, the study said.
Unlike the publicly documented military aid of the United States to Ukraine, it was not possible to find complete information about what the US has sent to Israel since October 7 last, so the $17.9 billion for the year is partial, researchers said.
They cited the Biden administration’s “attempts to hide the full amount of aid and types of programs through official administration.”
Funding for a key US 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, with Biden saying on Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”
US military operations in the Middle East
The Biden administration has strengthened its military presence in the region since the start of the war in Gaza, aimed at deterring and responding to any attacks by Israeli and American forces.
Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including enhanced US military aid to Egypt and other allies in the region.
The US had 34,000 troops in the Middle East the day Hamas broke through Israel’s barriers around Gaza to launch an attack. That number rose to nearly 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after an alleged Israeli strike killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.
The number of US ships and aircraft deployed – carrier strike groups, amphibious groups, military groups, and air defense batteries – in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has varied throughout the year.
The Pentagon said another carrier strike group is heading to Europe soon and that could increase the number of troops if two carriers are in the area at the same time.
Fighting the Houthis
The US military has been deployed since the start of the war to try to stop heavy strikes by the Houthis, an armed group that controls Yemen’s capital and northern areas, and has been shelling merchant ships in the Red Sea in cooperation with Gaza. The researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the US “an unexpectedly complex and costly challenge.”
The Houthis are increasingly attacking ships that travel through the vital trade route, drawing US 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 United States has deployed multiple aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and expensive multi-million dollar missiles against the cheap $2,000 Iranian Houthi drones,” the authors said.
Just on Friday, the US military struck more than a dozen Houthis in Yemen, targeting weapons systems, bases and other equipment, officials said.
The researchers’ calculations include at least $55 million in additional combat costs from enhanced operations in the region.
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