Taxpayers are yet again on the hook for America’s supposed “closest Middle East ally” as the Pentagon is planning to allocate at least $3.5 billion to restock weapons used in defense of Israel.
A Bloomberg report issued this week has reviewed Department of Defense budget documents prepared through mid-May. Emergency expenditures are highlighted which include US combat operations “executed at the request of or in coordination with Israel for the defense of Israeli territory, personnel or assets during attacks by Iran” or its proxies.
The largest single portion of the funding is $1 billion that is earmarked for replenishing Standard Missile interceptors, specifically the SM-3 IB Threat Upgrade models made by Raytheon and deployed by US Navy ships to intercept ballistic missiles.
Each of these big missiles are estimated to be between $9 million and $12 million, and these were used in the initial April 2024 flare-up and brief round of fighting between Israel and Iran.
The US assisted Israel following the Netanyahu government’s airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus – which was the first such deliberate attack by a sovereign government on a foreign embassy in history (the lone precedent being the Chinese embassy strike in Belgrade in 1999, which the US apologized for as an ‘accident’).
The second-largest funding request in the documents is $204 million to restock THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptors, produced by Lockheed Martin at a price tag of about $13 million each.
All of this will be pushed through despite recent polls showing public support for Israel being at a recent all-time low. The American public is also generally war-weary, given the now years-long conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and the fact that Washington has sunk billions into supporting one side of each war.
The American Right has also begun to shift, with notable figures like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene now actively pushing to cut all funds to Israel, being the first Republican to ever label what Israel is doing “genocide”.
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