Trump says U.S. will end $4 billion in annual aid to Israel by year’s end, arguing the country no longer needs it
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Washington will stop providing Israel with roughly $4 billion in annual aid at the end of 2026, saying he reached an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the funding while leaving open the possibility of future U.S. assistance if needed.
“We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel,” Trump said during an Election Day interview on Fox & Friends. “Now we’ll help Israel if they need it.”
Asked why the assistance was being terminated, Trump replied: “Because they don’t need it,” describing Israel as a prosperous country capable of purchasing U.S. weapons itself.
Trump said Israel would remain free to “buy whatever they want from us,” framing the shift as an end to direct U.S. assistance rather than a break in the countries’ military relationship.
The announcement would represent a major change in decades of U.S. security assistance to Israel. The current 10-year memorandum of understanding, signed in 2016, provides $38 billion in U.S. military assistance from fiscal years 2019 through 2028, or about $3.8 billion annually.
Trump said Netanyahu had agreed to the change and was comfortable with it. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately comment on Trump’s announcement.
During the wide-ranging interview, Trump repeatedly portrayed the United States as the dominant military power in the Middle East and Israel as a smaller partner, calling Israel a “helper.”
He also addressed the conflict with Iran, again rejecting the characterization of the confrontation as a conventional war. “Russia-Ukraine is a war. World War II was a war. Iran is not a war,” Trump said.
Trump said U.S. forces had struck an Iranian air-defense installation overnight after monitoring its construction, remarks that came after U.S. officials said an American fighter destroyed a surface-to-air missile launcher on Iran’s Qeshm Island after Iranian forces fired at a U.S. aircraft.
Trump also repeated his assertion that Iran had been close to obtaining a nuclear weapon before U.S. military action and said Tehran had since been “decapitated” militarily. His claim that Iran would have obtained a nuclear weapon within two weeks remains his own assessment rather than an independently established timeline.
“We have them totally where we want,” Trump said of Iran. “We can finish them off, or we can be nice and let thousands of people live.”