US President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that Washington would end a 10-year security assistance deal with Israel, under which it provides its ally with $3.8 billion in annual aid until 2028, as Americans voted in the 2026 midterm elections.
"We'll help Israel if they need it," Trump said in an interview on US current affairs show Fox and Friends, adding that he had agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut the assistance.
The Republican president said Israel was "fine" with him ending the assistance, which began in 2019 and was brokered through a memorandum of understanding three years earlier under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
"You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash," Trump said. "Look, we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it. And I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money."
"Israel's our number one; we give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it... If they did need it, I would say keep it going," he added.
Criticism of US aid to Israel has intensified in recent years amid its war in Gaza, which a UN commission and several rights groups call a genocide, and its bombing campaign in Lebanon. Similarly, the months-long US-Israel war on Iran has further fuelled voter discontent, with the conflict contributing to a cost-of-living crisis and surging gas prices, alongside the impact of Trump's tariff wars and mounting national debt.
These issues have contributed to Trump's declining popularity, with the Republican Party bracing for a potential blue wave across the US.
Several polls have put Democrats in a strong position to regain control of the House of Representatives, with some also suggesting they could potentially take the Senate.
In Tuesday's interview Trump cited attacks by leftist Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the US Senate in the 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.
The United States has sent tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel over the past few years.
An academic study published last year found that the US, under the administrations of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, provided at least $21.7 billion in military assistance to Israel after the Gaza war began in 2023. The study was published on the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel that triggered the conflict.
Another study, also published last year by the Costs of War project at Brown University's Watson School of Public and International Affairs, said the US had spent roughly $10 billion more on security aid and operations in the broader Middle East over the preceding two years.
While the reports relied on open-source material for most of their findings, they offered some of the most comprehensive accounts of US military aid to close ally Israel and estimated the costs of direct American military involvement in the Middle East.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)