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In early January 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell. In an interview for the Economist, he claimed that he sought to “taper off” the $3.8 billion in military aid that Israel receives from the United States or even end this longstanding military assistance program entirely. Yet, Netanyahu claimed in the same interview that Israel is embroiled in a battle to defend all “western civilisation” from “fanatic forces” who wanted to “take us back to the early Middle Ages.” What makes this even more extraordinary is that previous reports suggested that Netanyahu not only sought to renew a military aid deal, but also to double the period it covers. Why, then, does Netanyahu want to cut off Israel’s only guaranteed supply of arms?

The answer is that Netanyahu’s recent interview is as notable for its glaring omissions as for its surprising declarations. Critically, he did not advocate ending America’s longstanding policy of upholding Israel’s qualitative military edge in the Middle East, which commits the United States to ensuring that Israel’s military maintains a decisive technological superiority over any other regional actor, friend or foe.

Given the scale of the recent regional disruption and the blowback that Washington has received as a result, a sober reconsideration of the military edge commitment and U.S. military aid to Israel makes sense. But Netanyahu’s implicit formula of ending U.S. military assistance, whilst keeping a qualitative military edge, would be the worst of all worlds. Minimizing U.S. input in Israel’s decision-making process will remove the scant existing constraints on Jerusalem’s recent revisionist grand strategic turn. Ending all U.S. military assistance to Israel, as Netanyahu advocates, is unrealistic. However, making assistance more conditional could recalibrate the dynamics of this relationship more in Washington’s favor. It will not give the United States a cast-iron veto over Israeli policy. Yet, it will end a something-for-nothing dependency that is in neither party’s interest. Equally, perpetuating the qualitative military edge commitment would continue to confine America’s ability to deepen ties with other non-Israeli regional partners. This not only hamstrings the United States and its allies — it also creates a space for great-power rivals such as Russia and China to fill the gap.

The Evolution of U.S. Military Assistance to Israel

There is indubitably much controversy surrounding U.S. military aid to Israel. Part of this is because anything related to the Arab-Israeli conflict is always going to be emotive. Part of this is also the eye-watering sums of money involved. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates total U.S. military aid to Israel since 1946 to be around $244 billion, with the nearest competitor a distant Afghanistan, at $133 billion. Currently, the United States provides Israel with $3.3 billion in foreign military financing each year, with an extra $500 million earmarked for missile defence. In practice, this is not the final figure but instead the lowest level of aid that Israel can expect to receive. According to the Council’s report, U.S. military assistance stood at nearly $18 billion during the 2024‑2025 fiscal year.

As U.S. aid to Israel has increased, the promise of ensuring Israel’s qualitative military edge has transformed from a political pledge to a formal commitment. It was formalized because successive American and Israeli administrations disagreed about what maintaining this pledge means in practice: Exactly how much and what grade of top-range military technology is the United States mandated to make available to Israel? What can the United States sell or not sell to its non-Israeli regional partners?

This is why, in his November 2025 meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Donald Trump’s pledge to sell Saudi Arabia “top of the line” F35s, instead of “reduced calibre” models, is not just a departure from decades of established military edge policy — it would inevitably be bitterly contested by Israel’s allies in the U.S. Congress, regardless of Netanyahu’s apparent willingness to end the long-established program of military aid to Israel.

Indeed, an act of Congress passed in 2008 mandates that the executive branch write to Congress before any arms sale to any other Middle Eastern actor except Israel to affirm that this transfer will not erode Israel’s qualitative military edge. This constraint has, in practice, been more political rather than strictly legal. Successive administrations have relied on creative certification and offsetting, often with tacit congressional acquiescence. It has nevertheless raised costs and caused headaches for multiple U.S. administrations without actually blocking arms transfers.

This dynamic unfolded in the early 1980s. After President Ronald Reagan’s administration announced that it would sell advanced airborne early warning and control aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Washington had to exert significant political capital on overcoming objections from pro-Israel lobbyists and members of Congress. In the end, the sale went through, but only after the United States offset it with a major arms package for Israel. Yet the damage to Saudi public diplomacy and image in the United States as a result of pro-Israel lobbying of public and elite opinion pushed Riyadh to turn to the United Kingdom for its next major arms deal.

In sum, two interlinked policy prescriptions shape the military dimension of the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship.” These stipulate that first, the United States finance Israel’s military procurements, and second, the United States maintain the Middle East’s military balance so that Israel will defeat any adversary comprehensively. It is this second stipulation — the qualitative military edge commitment — that shapes the first. This is because it ensures that Washington gives Jerusalem an unprecedented amount of financing and the green light for Israel to use this assistance to acquire top-tier technology. Equally, America’s commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge ensures this privilege extends to Israel and Israel alone. As such, it affects Washington’s relations with not just Israel, but the entire Middle East.

The Strategic Logic of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge

Though U.S. military assistance to Israel was relatively low in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Cold War’s great-power rivalry incrementally brought Jerusalem and Washington together. For instance, President John F. Kennedy sold Israel Hawk anti-aircraft missiles in 1962 because the Soviets had furnished Egypt with long-range bombers. But it was the Six-Day War of June 1967 that was the game-changer. This was for three reasons: First, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration saw the leading Arab states — Egypt and Syria — as the aggressors and as irredeemable Soviet proxies. Second, these same states lost the war spectacularly, which raised Israel’s perceived strategic utility. Third, the Soviets attempted to compensate and reassure their defeated Arab allies by rapidly rearming them. Accordingly, one year after the war, Johnson’s administration sold Israel F-4 Phantom jets in 1968, marking the first time the United States sold Israel military technology that its neighbors did not possess.

The significance of this emerging “special relationship” became even clearer after the euphoria of the Six Day War was superseded by the strategic shock of the Yom Kippur War of late 1973. After Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Jerusalem’s pleas for assistance were roundly rebuffed because its fair-weather European friends feared that the Arab states would refuse to sell them oil. The United States, by contrast, took the hit: As gas stations throughout the country ran dry, President Richard Nixon’s administration organized a re-supply worth $2.2 billion in military equipment to Israel.

This decision provoked consternation from the Arab world. But Henry Kissinger — then national security advisor — outlined its logic in a post-war conversation with the Saudis by claiming that: “The Israelis now know how dependent they are on the United States and that means they are going to listen to us.” Accordingly, once both sides agreed to a ceasefire, the United States immediately leaned heavily on Israel to make concessions. Yet it also increased its military assistance because Washington adopted the principle of “hardware for software” — that providing top-tier military technology and increased funding would make Israel feel more secure and therefore more willing to take calculated risks. This also required that Israeli decision-makers think carefully about what best advanced their national interests — holding onto territory or entrenching the emerging “special relationship” with the United States.

This transactionalist approach was soon vindicated. In 1974, Israel conceded territory outside of war for the first time since the Six-Day War when it returned parts of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. While Israel received some Egyptian political concessions, the real prize was a U.S. pledge to “make every effort to be fully responsive on a continuing and long-term basis to Israel’s military equipment requirements.” This was the first formal step towards guaranteeing Israel’s qualitative military edge. In 1975, Israel withdrew from more of the Sinai and received $8.3 billion in U.S. military aid in one fiscal year alone. It also received a written guarantee from Washington that “the United States will make every effort to ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge.”

Following its initial efficacy, the United States doubled down on military assistance. In every single year since, the United States has provided Israel with at least $3 billion. It also continued to employ the “hardware for software” principle: As the Oslo process of negotiations with the Palestinians floundered, 1999 saw the first of several U.S.-Israeli memorandums of understanding that formalized military assistance. This was because President Bill Clinton sought to incentivise Israel to continue the talks. Similarly, the military assistance program outlasted the Cold War because its broader strategic logic of arming Israel to deter and contain regional rivals remained pertinent, as Jerusalem’s and Washington’s threat perception shifted from the Soviet-aligned Arab states to Iran.

The Qualitative Military Edge Commitment Today

Critics of the “special relationship” often highlight that the “Israel lobby” skews Washington’s grand strategy in Jerusalem’s favor. Indeed, political dynamics within the United States have incrementally transformed the “special relationship,” pivoting it away from its transactional origins and towards a paradigm where Israel receives an unmatched level of military assistance with relatively few strings attached. Supporters have argued that this is because Israel and the United States share fundamental values (such as liberal democracy) and regional interests (such as containing Iran). While this may be true, the shift away from transnationalism has decreased U.S. leverage over Israeli decision-making. It has also caused Congress to constrain the executive branch when its policies were seen to counter Israel’s national interests or harm its security.

The erosion of U.S. influence over Israel is therefore not solely a function of Israel’s actions or the regional balance of power. It instead reflects structural constraints within the American political system. These are far more salient today than in the 1970s, when the “hardware for software” paradigm began. Lobbying pressure, campaign finance dynamics, and the electoral risks of even modest criticism now insulate military assistance from the kinds of leverage Washington can apply elsewhere. Israeli leaders — foremost among them Netanyahu — have learned to employ this dynamic as effective leverage to raise the costs of any public executive criticism of Israeli policy.

But while internal lobbying groups and growing pro-Israel sentiment in Congress have entrenched the military edge commitment and America’s military assistance to Israel and have raised the costs of criticism, they had scant agency in creating either paradigm. Instead, the strategic logic of these longstanding policies can only be understood within the intersection of macro Cold War dynamics and micro Middle Eastern geopolitics described above. It is this context which is a crucial barometer for assessing whether these policies remain fit for purpose in a post-Oct. 7 era.

Indubitably, U.S. military hardware helped give Israel the military edge it needed to not just defend itself, but also rollback multiple shared threats to Jerusalem and Washington. Iran was privately furious with Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks because their brutality gave Israel the mandate it needed to unleash its latent destructive power across the region. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is a broken shell of its former self; Syria’s Assad regime is no more; and joint U.S.-Israeli action has stunted Iran’s nuclear program. Israel’s U.S.-guaranteed qualitative military edge played a major role in facilitating these developments and protecting Israelis from retaliation, particularly through joint investment in missile defence.

While U.S. and Israeli hardware may be outperforming expectations, the same cannot be said for the software component of this dynamic. According to the State Department, military aid helps build “the confidence necessary for Israel to take calculated risks for peace.” If this were true, why is Israel at the apex of its military might and its foes weaker than ever, but Jerusalem has expanded its territorial control in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria? Since the October 7 Attacks, U.S. military assistance to Israel has escalated, as it did during the Yom Kippur War. The difference this time has been the obvious lack of any Israeli intent to make subsequent concessions — something that the United States seems unwilling or unable to change. The trauma of Oct. 7 certainly plays a role, but it was in 2015, long before Hamas’ brutal attacks, that Netanyahu came out against Palestinian statehood, undoing years of U.S. lobbying in one declaration. Yet in the same year, the United States provided Israel with $4.8 billion in military aid.

Similarly, though the seismic shifts in the Middle East’s balance of power could benefit the United States in the long term, this was never part of Washington’s plan. Israel repeatedly defied the demands of President Joe Biden’s administration for a long-term Gaza ceasefire. Netanyahu also withstood U.S. pressure to delineate a “day after” plan for the territory. Both the Biden and Trump administrations tried and failed to stop Israel from expanding its war to other fronts. Jerusalem’s escalations culminated in September 2025, when Israel struck Qatar — another major American non-NATO ally. Expanding U.S. military assistance to Israel made sense when the former was a status quo power, because Washington — along with its regional Arab allies — prioritized regional stability. But now that Israel is pursuing regional hegemony through a force-centric revisionist grand strategy, a rethink of existing policy paradigms makes sense.

The irony is that Netanyahu wants a reassessment for the opposite reason. He sees ending military assistance as a mechanism to downsize U.S. influence in Israeli decision-making. His recent comments raised eyebrows, but he made similar arguments during his first stint as prime minister in the late 1990s, when his refusal to accept that U.S. military aid came with conditions led President Clinton to rhetorically ask: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Towards a Better Paradigm

Netanyahu is probably bluffing, given that U.S.-Israeli defense cooperation is so embedded that ending all military assistance by 2028 is unrealistic, to say the least. He likely knows that the current paradigm is under unprecedented strain: Americans across the political spectrum are increasingly disinclined to continue current levels of military assistance to Israel. This has led pundits to ask whether Biden will be “the last pro-Israel Democratic president,” whose ideological affinity for Israel coalesced with internal U.S. structural constraints that raise the costs of public criticism of Jerusalem’s policies. This disincentivised any attempt to check Israel’s policies, even when they diverged sharply from Washington’s preferences. This is not something unique to Biden — previous American presidents from across the political spectrum, particularly Clinton and George W. Bush, have faced the same ideological and institutional constraints.

Yet continuing to guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge while tapering off military assistance is unlikely to appease U.S. voters. Also, it will likely not assuage the concerns of Washington’s regional allies who feel increasingly threatened by Jerusalem’s revisionism. Even if it significantly decreases its military assistance, the United States will still be implicated for enabling Israel’s actions. It will at the same time possess less agency for constraining Israel’s force-centric pursuit of regional hegemony.

This is why a better solution is a new memorandum of understanding that makes military assistance conditional on Israel’s willingness to compromise and can be adjusted every five years (as it was when initially agreed) rather than every ten years (as it is currently). Opposition from Israel’s supporters could be mitigated by allowing military assistance to fluctuate upwards as well as downwards. This would ensure that the United States gets more “bang for its buck.” It also mimics the shift away from a something-for-nothing dynamic and towards the transactionalism that Trump has sought from America’s European allies.

This would not give the United States full control over Israeli policymaking, which is neither achievable nor desirable. More frequent congressional review does not restore lost leverage so much as prevent further erosion by reintroducing predictable points of influence into an otherwise permissive system. Critics of Israel often over-exaggerate the influence that Washington could exert over Jerusalem. No one should expect a relationship where an American president says “jump” and their Israeli counterpart replies with “how high?.” The institutional constraints and political costs that can be and are imposed on any U.S. administration are now higher than ever before. Adjusting U.S. military aid to Israel will not change this dynamic. But the fact that long-serving, pro-Israel senators such as Lindsey Graham have joined Netanyahu’s call to reassess U.S. military aid suggests that the Trump administration now has a rare and possibly fleeting opportunity to do so.

Making military assistance subject to a more robust and frequent review would, at best, modestly reintroduce predictability and bounded influence into a relationship that has become increasingly permissive. It could, however, help tilt the scales of influence at the margins more in Washington’s favor by reintroducing incentives to align Israeli decision-making with U.S. preferences. It would delineate to Israel’s policymakers and voters the benefits of tailoring policy to conform to U.S. interests and the costs of not doing so, without resorting to coercive measures. While this would not restore U.S. leverage over Israel to 1970s-era levels, it would allow Washington to practice damage control and disentangle Israel and the United States from a paradigm of which both sides are increasingly questioning the strategic utility.

Concurrently, the United States should reassess its military edge guarantee — a legacy policy that is no longer fit for purpose. Israel is not America’s sole ally in a pro-Soviet region. It is one of America’s nine major non-NATO allies in the Middle East and North Africa. Nor is Israel alone in an irredeemably hostile region. Many of America’s major non-NATO allies — such as Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain — have full diplomatic relations with Israel. Others, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have signalled their willingness to normalize relations if Israel commits to Palestinian statehood.

Most importantly, the qualitative military edge commitment stops the United States from employing arms sales to deepen its regional ties. This should be anathema to Trump, the so-called “arms dealer in chief.” Ending the U.S. guarantee of Israel’s qualitative military edge would also stymie Russian and Chinese outreach to America’s regional partners, who — when denied weapons — have turned to Moscow and Beijing instead. This becomes an immutable barrier to U.S. outreach because once a state diversifies its weapons procurement, then technology sharing concerns kick in and impedes further arms sales. This is why the United Arab Emirates’ 2020 purchase of F-35 jets from the United States fell through, leading Abu Dhabi to buy advanced fighter planes from France instead.

Pro-Israel voices might assert that this is a recipe for an arms race or risks endangering Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy. But this ignores that the military edge assurance has repeatedly caused regional weapons proliferation — when Washington felt obliged to offset the sale of weapons to Arab allies by selling Israel even more advanced arms than it had cleared for transfer in the past. As the Saudi early warning and control aircraft case demonstrates, the U.S. commitment to Israel’s military edge has not stopped arms sales to Arab states. Instead, it has complicated the process and raised the costs of any deal for a U.S. administration while still causing potential buyers to look elsewhere even after a deal has gone through.

Critically, the risks of endangering Israel are arguably lower than ever before, given that U.S. military assistance and support for Israel’s qualitative military edge have served their purpose and allowed Israel to become the region’s dominant military power. Israel’s democratic status is praiseworthy, but the latest National Security Strategy makes clear that normative concerns will no longer constrain Washington’s statecraft. Given U.S. public opinion, Netanyahu’s public statements, and regional pressure, the momentum for change is now unmistakable. The real question is whether the United States will lead a recalibration of this relationship that advances its interests, consolidates Israeli security, and promotes regional stability alike.

Rob Geist Pinfold is a lecturer in international security at King’s College London’s Defence Studies Department, a research fellow at Charles University’s Peace Research Center Prague, and an adjunct professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna.

Image: 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command via DVIDS