President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has made a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States to stop sending $4 billion in aid annually to Israel, without providing details.
Oil prices slid in response to Trump’s comments.
“Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” he said in a phone interview with “Fox and Friends,” saying that the money would get “cut off at the end of the year.”
Trump made the comments while voters were heading to the polls for the midterm elections. During the campaign, U.S. aid to Israel, and Israel’s war in Gaza, have become one of the most contentious issues.
On stopping aid, Trump said Israel was “fine with it because, you know, they have become a very successful country,” adding that “they don’t need it.”
“Now we’ll help Israel if they need it. You know they’ve been a great ally,” he said, adding that the idea to halt the aid had come from Netanyahu himself.
“Can I be honest with you? He brought it up,” Trump added. “He said: ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
The Israeli prime minister said in January that he hoped to “taper off” American military aid over the next decade. Asked about Trump’s comments Tuesday, a spokesman for Netanyahu said he didn’t know anything about the remarks but would check for details.
It was not immediately clear which exact funding Trump meant. A memorandum of understanding that provides $3.8 billion annual U.S. military aid to Israel is approaching its expiration date in 2028 and conversations have been underway on how Washington’s assistance to Israel would evolve beyond that date.
In the two years since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza, the U.S. sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel, according to a paper by William D. Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The president appeared to acknowledge a political dimension to the decision, saying, “The left uses the $4 billion payment that everybody knows about, when it’s no secret, as a, as a signal of unfairness, and we can’t allow that to happen.”
“I don’t like that because you know it’s too easy. It’s almost too easy a target,” he said.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump added, referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan progressive Democratic Senate nominee, who has forcefully criticized Israel and U.S. foreign policy during the campaign.
Brent crude oil fell by more than 3% to around $101 per barrel, its lowest level in more than three weeks, as investors and traders viewed the comments as potentially further evidence that the Iran war could be ended without escalation.
Trump and Netanyahu launched the war on Iran earlier this year, and munitions in the U.S. have been increasingly depleted as a result.
The drop added to oil’s biggest one-day decline in three months Monday, after Trump told NBC News that he was not planning to attack Iran after the midterms.
The comments were seized upon by Netanyahu’s domestic political opponents.
“The cessation of American aid deals a severe blow to Israel’s security and the quality of life in the country,” Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, said in a statement.
“At a time when Israel’s defense expenditures have reached massive proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its stocks of offensive weaponry, and when air defense capabilities have been eroded following such a prolonged war,” Golan added. “Netanyahu has notched yet another colossal failure to his name.”
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
