The cooperation between Israel and the United States during the war with Iran marks the culmination of a long shift in the relationship between the two countries. For years, Washington effectively served as Israel’s patron, providing funding to purchase U.S. military equipment and a diplomatic umbrella (including veto protection in the UN Security Council) in exchange for general alignment with U.S. policy preferences and close cooperation on intelligence and military technology. Through the latest joint military action against a mutual enemy, the relationship has now entered a qualitatively different phase. Rather than acting alone or being excluded from a U.S.-led coalition, as it was during both Gulf wars, Israel has operated as a full partner, sharing targets and operational responsibilities with U.S. forces.
Israel’s newfound status, however, has also revealed just how outdated the existing U.S.-Israeli framework for defense industrial cooperation has become. For 50 years the United States has provided Israel with funds to purchase U.S.-made equipment. This Cold War–era model originally aimed to build up the capabilities of a young state surrounded by hostile neighbors while establishing some U.S. leverage over Israeli policy in order to protect Washington’s relations with Arab states. This framework served both sides well for decades, but it is no longer suited to the realities of the Middle East today. Israel is now a major regional power, boasts an advanced economy, and is no longer at odds with many of its neighbors. It does not need American financial aid to either survive or thrive.
Political leaders in both Israel and the United States have begun recognizing the anachronistic nature of the current arrangement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, giving voice to the growing disquiet in Israel’s security establishment that dependence on U.S. largess has unnecessarily constrained Israel’s military actions, recently insisted that the country had “come of age” and should seek to wind down over “the next ten years” the U.S. military aid it receives. The Trump administration has been adamant that partners and allies across the globe wean themselves off subsidies and grants from the United States and fund their own defense needs. Meanwhile, criticism of U.S. military aid to Israel has become increasingly common on both sides of the American political aisle.
The confluence of deepening strategic ties, mutual recognition of the disadvantages of patronage, and U.S. political polarization has presented the United States and Israel with a rare opportunity to refresh their relationship. Washington should maintain the mutually beneficial aspects of technological, intelligence, and military cooperation but stop supplying aid to Israel, allowing the country to stand on its own feet. Instead of a client, Israel should be the United States’ genuine partner.
PATRON-CLIENT PRIVILEGE
The United States became Israel’s major arms supplier following the Six-Day War in 1967, after the country’s first patron, France, imposed an arms embargo on Israel and aligned itself with the Arab states. Initially, Washington provided Israel with long-term loans to purchase U.S. fighter jets, but following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Nixon and Carter administrations replaced the loans with grants to facilitate Israeli withdrawals from areas around the Suez Canal and later from the Sinai Peninsula.
Subsequent U.S. administrations chose to renew and increase aid in order to offset security risks that Israel assumed during the Oslo process. In the three decades since, the model has evolved, phasing out nondefense-related aid and the portion of defense aid earmarked for purchases of Israeli-manufactured weapons and adding funding for missile defense cooperation. The current iteration was most recently codified in a 2016 memorandum of understanding that runs through 2028. It outlines $3.3 billion of annual U.S. financing for Israel to purchase American-made equipment, plus $500 million for joint missile defense projects—equivalent in 2026 to roughly seven percent of Israel’s approved defense budget.
Proponents of this arrangement in both countries have argued that U.S. aid is a concrete sign of Washington’s support for Israel, strengthening deterrence against its enemies, and a demonstration of continued U.S. commitment and influence in the region. Others have argued that the aid model is mutually beneficial: Israel gets much-needed equipment while the United States directs taxpayer money to help sustain and create manufacturing jobs. The bargain, they say, also functions as free advertising for U.S. arms manufacturers, since Israeli use of American weapons demonstrates the superiority of U.S. platforms and encourages their purchase by other countries.
There is much truth to these arguments. Aid is indeed a symbol of U.S. support. It helps strengthen the Israel Defense Forces. And it does create jobs in the United States and increase sales of U.S. weapons to third parties. But the benefits of aid no longer outweigh the strategic, economic, and political disadvantages of maintaining a framework devised when Israel was a young country in search of a reliable patron.
The current framework undermines Israeli deterrence by projecting an image of Israel as a dependent client, incapable of standing on its own. And whatever deterrence the symbolic value of aid did provide was not enough to stop Hamas from attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, or Iran and its other proxies from launching their own attacks in the months and years after. In practice, Israel’s enemies have been deterred only as a result of Israel’s own capabilities and its demonstrated willingness to use them.
Instead of a client, Israel should be the United States’ genuine partner.
Israel’s foreign policy has changed significantly since the signing of the last several memorandums of understanding. In the past, U.S. administrations offered increased aid to incentivize Israel to negotiate peace deals with the Palestinians. In 2000, for example, U.S. President Bill Clinton committed to raise military aid by around a third over the course of ten years to encourage Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to make an unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood at Camp David. In 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush agreed to a new and enlarged ten-year memorandum with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the Annapolis summit later that year. The 2016 memorandum agreed between U.S. President Barack Obama and Netanyahu was widely perceived as an inducement to strengthen Israel’s security after the signing of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal with Iran that Israel strongly opposed. But the prevailing mindset of the Israeli public and its political leadership since October 7 has shifted. The country is no longer willing to take any chances with its security and is unlikely to consider any policies that leave it exposed to invasion or rocket and missile attacks.
Nor does the arrangement make sense for Israel economically. Israel’s economy has grown significantly since the aid model was instituted in the 1970s. At that time, U.S. aid constituted around 19 percent of Israel’s GDP and 23 percent of its state budget. Since then, however, the country’s GDP has increased by a factor of ten in real terms. Yet the value of aid has remained around $3 billion a year. Accounting for inflation, its actual value has diminished. Today the aid amounts to less than one percent of GDP and just under three percent of the state budget.
Israel’s reliance on the U.S. defense industry has also hampered its domestic industry, especially its independent munitions production capabilities. When there are U.S. dollars to spend, it is simply more convenient to buy off-the-shelf munitions from the United States than to make the long-term commitment of orders that Israeli manufacturers need to justify maintaining production lines.
Finally, the patron-client dynamic is beginning to undermine the broad-based political support for the alliance in the United States. At a time of deep partisan polarization in the United States, the need for Congress to regularly pass bills to keep aid flowing gets Israel unnecessarily tangled up in American domestic politics and can turn the country’s conduct into a lightning rod.
In 2024, aid appropriations for Israel were held up by congressional disagreements over aid to Ukraine and U.S. border security. That same year, the Biden administration withheld certain munitions during critical periods of the war against Hamas. And with favorable attitudes toward Israel among the U.S. public currently in decline (a Pew poll in April found that 60 percent of Americans have a negative view of Israel), many lawmakers are willing to move against aid; 40 Senate Democrats supported a bill that would have blocked the sale of certain military equipment to Israel in April, while all 52 Republicans voted against the bill. For many years, Israel was concerned that bipartisan support was important to keep the aid flowing. Today, the existence of aid contributes to the undermining of bipartisan support.
AFTER AID
The expiration of the current U.S.-Israeli memorandum of understanding in 2028 presents an opportunity to set new terms for the relationship. A new agreement for 2028–38 should outline a gradual phase-out of U.S. defense grants. Israel will, of course, feel the loss of U.S. military aid. The country bears tremendous security costs, consistently investing between four and six percent of its GDP on defense, higher than most other democratic states. Finding alternatives to American grants will require budgeting adjustments and long-term reforms. Nevertheless, with a GDP of $610 billion and a growing economy, Israel should be able to undertake a gradual transition away from aid and toward fully funding its own acquisitions.
Without aid from the United States, Israel may shop around for some of the capabilities that it currently purchases with U.S. grants, especially as it ramps up in-house munitions production. But Israel is not prepared to develop and manufacture its own fighter jet platforms, on which the bulk of the aid is spent. Even after the aid stops flowing, Israel will continue to acquire these platforms from the United States in roughly the amount that it does today, but they will be purchased with Israeli money, rather than recirculating U.S. taxpayer money back into the U.S. economy. Israel will continue to use and enhance U.S. weaponry, raising its value internationally, just as it does today.
A partnership model should also preserve those elements of the current framework that are mutually beneficial, most notably in ballistic missile defense. In this area, Israel and the United States already work collaboratively to direct the additional $500 million under the current memorandum of understanding: the United States provides most of the funding and Israel leads R & D, while both countries share intellectual property and manufacturing. The United States and Israel should expand cooperation to meet both countries’ needs, including the Trump administration’s new Golden Dome missile defense project and Israel’s continued need to defend itself against long-range missiles from Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
The new framework should continue to uphold Israel’s qualitative military edge. The countries should maintain existing fast-track mechanisms to ensure Israel’s access to advanced U.S. defense technologies and reduce bureaucratic delays, including the expedited congressional notification process typically reserved for treaty allies, even after Israel begins financing its purchases independently. The fast-track mechanisms should also be expanded to include an Israeli guarantee to prioritize U.S. access to Israeli technology, such as the Trophy Active Protection System used by the U.S. Army to protect armored vehicles against antitank missiles.
CARRY YOUR OWN WEIGHT
An independent Israel that can fund its own military will be a valuable asset for the United States in the Middle East and beyond, serving as the bridgehead for the pro-American camp in the region alongside the Gulf states. In doing so, it can free U.S. attention and resources for priorities outside the region, namely the Western Hemisphere and the competition with China in the Indo-Pacific, and endear itself as a model ally to an administration that has expressed a strong desire for self-reliant partners and allies.
Ultimately, the transition away from U.S. military aid should be understood not as a weakening of ties between the United States and Israel but as the natural evolution of a relationship that has matured over decades. Israel’s growing economic and military strength allows it to assume greater responsibility for its own defense while contributing more meaningfully to Washington’s strategic goals, many of which Israel shares. By replacing a patronage-based aid structure with a deeper technological, industrial, and strategic relationship, the two countries can build a partnership better suited for the geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century.
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