US President Donald Trump said today (Tuesday) regarding the transfer of American funds to Israel: “Netanyahu and I made a deal. We’re currently paying them $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we would stop paying them, and they’re fine with it, because they’ve become a very successful country. They don’t need it.”
Trump made the remarks in an interview with Fox News during Election Day for the House of Representatives and the Senate, which is taking place today. “We’re not going to pay Israel anymore,” he said, adding that the funds for 2026 had already been transferred. “By the end of the year, we will no longer be paying Israel. We’ll help them if they need it. They’re great allies, and we’re the best allies to many, many countries.”
On the security situation with Iran, he said: “We have total control of the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody thought that was possible. The blockade we imposed there, our navy – they have the best equipment and the best people who know how to use that equipment. These are very complex things, the Patriot and Tomahawk missiles. You need very smart people to operate them.”
The issue of US aid to Israel has been a source of concern for Americans on both sides of the political spectrum over the past two years. Senior figures from both parties have spoken out about ending military aid programmes to Israel. The most recent agreement was signed under the Obama administration in 2016 and came into effect in 2018. The next agreement was expected to be signed in 2027, but it may now not be signed. Under the aid agreement, the US transfers between $3.3 billion and $4.3 billion to Israel each year, some of which is used to purchase American weapons.
As early as May 2025, Netanyahu first spoke of the need to “wean ourselves off American aid” during a discussion in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. Netanyahu has addressed several times how the absence of this aid could be offset by strengthening Israel’s defence industries.
About four months later, Netanyahu addressed the issue again at a conference of the Accountant General at the Ministry of Finance, in his now-famous “Sparta Speech”. “We could find ourselves in a situation where our arms industries are blocked,” he said, against the backdrop of the international boycotts Israel faced following the war in Gaza and the possibility of an end to US aid. “We will have to develop arms industries here, not just research and development, but also the ability to produce what we need. We are going to be Athens and Super-Sparta. We have no choice.”
In January this year, he said in an interview with The Economist that he wanted to gradually reduce US aid to Israel over the course of a decade. He repeated this in May this year, in an interview with the American programme 60 Minutes: “I want to reduce American financial support to zero, the financial component of our security cooperation.” In an interview with Channel 14 at the end of last June, he also said: “I want to stop American aid. It’s like a welfare allowance. I don’t want it.”