By Authors: Trita Parsi and Marcus Stanley
Overview
The U.S. is in danger of being further captured by Israel’s foreign policy agenda. Continuing military support for Israel without exercising leverage to constrain Israel’s actions will draw the U.S. into ever-greater military and political commitments in the Middle East, at a major cost to American resources, prestige, and interests.
U.S. assistance to Israel is the crucial enabling factor for Israel’s aggressive military posture. U.S. military aid to Israel has at least tripled since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. directly provided one-third of Israel’s own defense budget in 2024. U.S. military operations in the region since the start of the Gaza war have indirectly added billions of dollars to the amount the U.S. has spent on behalf of Israel.
Yet Israel’s security doctrine directly threatens the long-term American interest in establishing a stable, self-sustaining security order in the Middle East, which would help enable a significantly lower U.S. military presence and level of involvement in the region. Israel’s current course in its conflicts will require more U.S. military engagement, not less, with no clear end in sight.
Discussion
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Israel has engaged in continuing reprisals against Gaza and launched a wider regional war that has featured tactical military successes against the “Axis of Resistance” in Iran and Lebanon, but without a discernible ability to date to translate these successes into permanent strategic wins.
As the Gaza war approaches two years, the senior Hamas leaders involved in the decision to launch the Oct. 7 attack have all been killed, and Gaza has been laid waste, with almost 80 percent of its buildings destroyed. Yet Hamas remains in Gaza and the desire for Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation has grown.
After attacking Israel post–Oct. 7, Hezbollah has lost its senior leadership as well as thousands of fighters, up to one million civilians have been displaced from Hezbollah–controlled areas in southern Lebanon, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims Israel has “pushed them decades back.” Yet Hezbollah remains an armed, hostile force.
Combined Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran have reportedly set back Iran’s nuclear program, killed many senior Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists (including civilian nuclear scientists), and appear to have temporarily wiped out Iranian air defenses. Yet Israel failed to achieve its core objective of regime collapse, and both Israeli officials and U.S. President Donald Trump have indicated that the war will continue.
While much of this was carried out by the Israeli military, increased U.S. military assistance has been critical. The figure below draws on Congressional Research Service, or CRS, figures of direct U.S. military aid to Israel, which show that direct U.S. aid more than tripled from 2023 to 2024. When indirect costs of U.S. military operations in the Middle East in support of Israel during 2023 and 2024 are included, Brown University researchers calculate that U.S. assistance to Israel in the year following the Oct. 7 attacks reached $22.8 billion. According to CRS analysis, U.S. military assistance accounted for fully one-third of Israel’s 2024 military spending. While full 2025 figures are not yet available, direct U.S. military operations in support of Israel were even more extensive in 2025.
Conclusion
A lasting and stable regional peace is the best way to remove the threat of the U.S. being dragged into an expanded conflict in the Middle East. Such a peace requires creative diplomacy and restraint from all sides, including the U.S. and Israel. Such restraint is unlikely to occur as long as the U.S. shows no willingness to put conditions on military assistance to Israel and demand that Israel shift from military aggression to a search for a peaceful settlement.
The most effective path to achieve a stable peace would be for Washington to support regional efforts to create a security architecture and body for the region that would include Israel. The region does not have an equivalent to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or any other inclusive, standing security body.
Not only has the absence of any such body contributed to the region’s perpetual instability, but it also makes it difficult for the United States to engage in burden-shifting since there is no independent infrastructure to shift the security burden to. Such an inclusive body could also offer Israel the strongest security guarantees to date, going far beyond the mutual recognition the Arab Peace Plan of 2002 offered or the normalization agreements of the Abraham Accords proposed. Most importantly, it would help the United States to finally free itself from the prospect of endless war in the Middle East.