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Israel to receive $1 billion in bombs and bulldozers from Trump

Israel to receive $1 billion in bombs and bulldozers from Trump

Tel Aviv is clearly exempt from the president's blitz on foreign aid

Reporting | QiOSK

President Trump paused most foreign aid programs in January but is now asking Congress to approve $1 billion worth of bombs and demolition equipment to Israel.

The administration has been adding exceptions to its foreign aid pause since announcing it, but it seems Israel’s aid was never in jeopardy, according to diplomatic cables.

The American taxpayer will pay for the $1 billion sale of the weapons as part of the $3.8. billion military aid package sent to Israel each year. In total, from Oct. 2023 to Oct. 2024, Israel received a record-breaking $17.9 billion worth of weapons, and President Biden announced plans to send an $8 billion arms package to the nation in January, but it has not yet been fully approved by Congress.

This new arms package comes as President Trump is set to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. Trump also lifted the pause on the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in late January.

The weapons and equipment included in the most recent sale include 1,000-pound “general purpose” bombs and Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers, which have historically been used to raze houses and other buildings in the West Bank as collective punishment, including as part of an ongoing operation in Jenin.

Trump’s decision to continue large-scale arms sales to Israel is shadowed by a fragile cease-fire in Gaza, and by reports that raised the death count in Gaza to at least 62,000.


Top Photo: A Palestinian man looks at an Israeli military vehicle during an Israeli raid in Tubas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank October 31, 2023. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
A Palestinian man looks at an Israeli military vehicle during an Israeli raid in Tubas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank October 31, 2023. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
Reporting | QiOSK
Iran
Top image credit: An Iranian man (not pictured) carries a portrait of the former commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and participates in a funeral for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, Iranian nuclear scientists, and civilians who are killed in Israeli attacks, in Tehran, Iran, on June 28, 2025, during the Iran-Israel ceasefire. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto VIA REUTERS)

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Middle East

Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a dangerous tendency to dismantle nations it deems adversarial. Now, neoconservative think tanks like the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament are openly promoting the balkanization of Iran — a reckless strategy that would further destabilize the Middle East, trigger catastrophic humanitarian crises, and provoke fierce resistance from both Iranians and U.S. partners.

As Israel and Iran exchanged blows in mid-June, FDD’s Brenda Shaffer argued that Iran’s multi-ethnic makeup was a vulnerability to be exploited. Shaffer has been a vocal advocate for Azerbaijan in mainstream U.S. media, even as she has consistently failed to disclose her ties to Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR. For years, she has pushed for Iran’s fragmentation along ethnic lines, akin to the former Yugoslavia’s collapse. She has focused much of that effort on promoting the secession of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azeris form Iran’s largest non-Persian group.

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Middle East

President Donald Trump has twice, within the space of a week, been at odds with U.S. intelligence agencies on issues involving Iran’s nuclear program. In each instance, Trump was pushing his preferred narrative, but the substantive differences in the two cases were in opposite directions.

Before the United States joined Israel’s attack on Iran, Trump dismissed earlier testimony by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in which she presented the intelligence community’s judgment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Questioned about this testimony, Trump said, “she’s wrong.”

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Middle East

The recent conflict, a direct confrontation that pitted Iran against Israel and drew in U.S. B-2 bombers, has likely rendered the previous diplomatic playbook for Tehran's nuclear program obsolete.

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