Trump axes US$3.8b annual military aid for Israel: ‘they no longer need it’

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Washington was ending a 10-year security aid deal with Israel that allowed US$3.8 billion in annual aid to its ally until 2028.

Trump said Israel was “fine” with him ending the aid, which began in 2019 and was signed under his predecessor, Barack Obama, three years earlier.

“We’ll help Israel if they need it,” he added in an interview on US current affairs show Fox and Friends, saying that he had agreed with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut the aid.

“Israel’s our No 1; we give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it … If they did need it, I would say keep it going,” Trump added.

Under the deal, Israel receives funding for the purchase of around US$3.8 billion of weapons a year.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received more than US$300 billion, adjusted for inflation, in US economic and military aid, according to figures from the Council on Foreign Relations, far more than any other country has received since 1946.

The Israeli prime minister has previously said he wanted to end Israel’s reliance on US support.

In June, Netanyahu called for his country to increase its military autonomy and reduce its reliance on Washington. In January he told The Economist that he hoped to do so within a decade, while in May he told US broadcaster CBS that he wanted support to reach “zero”.

Netanyahu said in an interview with an Israeli television channel in October: “If you think we’re going to continue receiving what I secured twice, and that’s tens of billions of dollars in American aid for the defence budget, prepare yourselves and get used to the fact that it won’t happen because America has changed.”

On Tuesday, Trump cited attacks by leftist Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the US Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections after harnessing popular discontent and anti-Israel sentiment, as part of the reasoning behind the decision.

“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” he said on Fox, referring to Israel and the aid.

US public support for Israel has fallen since the Gaza war began in 2023, particularly among Democrats.

A June Quinnipiac University poll ‌found 48 per cent of voters and 66 per cent of Democrats believe the US is too supportive of Israel, up from 16 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, ⁠when the question was first ⁠asked in 2017.

Some members of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement have ⁠also become increasingly critical of Israel, accusing it of having misled Trump – who campaigned in 2024 on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions – into believing Iran could easily be defeated in a war.

Congress passed a law in 2020 authorising the funding for Israel, but ‌the Senate and House of Representatives ‌must still pass appropriations bills every year to distribute and release the funds.