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US spends record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since October 7
WASHINGTON (AP) The United States has spent a record amount of at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the Gaza war, leading to an escalation of the Middle East conflict , according to a report from Brown University's Costs of War Project, released Monday, the anniversary of Hamas's attacks on Israel.
An additional $4.86 billion has been spent on ramping up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. 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 Iran-backed Hamas group.
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 accountings of the costs estimated by the United States as The Biden administration supports Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain the hostilities of armed groups allied with Iran in the region.
The financial toll adds to the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. The Israeli 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 significantly expanded its strikes there 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 total cost of America's wars since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and by fellow researcher William D. Hartung and Stéphane Semler.
Here's a look at where some of America's taxpayer dollars are going:
Record military aid to Israel
Israel, protected by the United States since its founding in 1948, is the largest recipient of American military aid in history, receiving an inflation-adjusted $251.2 billion since 1959, according to the report.
Despite this, the $17.9 billion spent since October 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the largest military aid sent to Israel in a year. The United States pledged to provide billions in military aid to Israel and Egypt each year when it signed its 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, as well as an agreement since the The Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
US aid since the start of the war in Gaza includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in withdrawals from US stockpiles and the handover of used equipment.
Most U.S. weapons delivered that year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker busting bombs and precision-guided bombs.
Spending ranges from $4 billion to replenish Israel's Iron Dome and Davids Sling missile defense systems to purchasing guns and jet fuel, the study found.
Unlike the United States, which has publicly documented its military aid to Ukraine, it has been impossible to obtain full details of what the United States has shipped to Israel since October 7. The $17.9 billion for the year is therefore only a partial figure, the researchers said.
They cited the Biden administration's efforts to hide the total amount of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvers.
Funding the United States' main ally in a war that took a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long loomed large in American politics, and Biden said Friday that no administration has helped Israel as much as I have.
US military operations in the Middle East
The Biden administration has increased its military force in the region since the start of the Gaza war, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and US forces.
These additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including increased U.S. military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.
The United States had 34,000 troops in the Middle East 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 a strike attributed to Israel that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total now stands at around 43,000.
The number of deployed US ships and aircraft, carrier strike groups, an amphibious strike group, fighter squadrons and air defense batteries in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, has varied during the year.
The Pentagon said another carrier strike group would head to Europe very soon and it could further increase the troop total if two carriers were in the region again at the same time.
The fight against the Houthis
The US military has deployed since the start of the war to try to counter escalating strikes by the Houthis, an armed faction that controls the capital and northern regions of Yemen, and has fired on merchant ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza. Researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the United States a surprisingly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.
The Houthis have continued to launch attacks on ships passing through the crucial trade route, drawing U.S. strikes on launch sites and other targets. The campaign became the most intense naval battle the Navy had faced since World War II.
The United States deployed several expensive multimillion-dollar aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and missiles against cheap Iranian-made Houthi drones that cost $2,000, the authors said.
The U.S. military struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen on Friday, attacking weapons systems, bases and other equipment, officials said.
The researchers' calculations included at least $55 million in additional combat balances from intensified operations in the region.
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