The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.
The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.
What happens when the proxy in the ‘proxy war’ goes against the interests of the more powerful country?
What happens when the ‘more powerful country’ ends up doing the bidding of its ‘proxy’ because of domestic political concerns and how political bribery has embedded itself in the nation like a swollen carbuncle?
What happens when the ‘proxy’ starts doing damage to our other allies, our international reputation, and gives us nothing back in return?
What happens when this has been going on for 40+ years?
Think we, not our enemies, have gotten the shit end of this deal. Only Israel sees net benefit.
Does Iran have functional nuclear bombs yet?
The proxy war is working just fine. People just don’t understand the goal.
Iran doesn’t want nuclear bombs. They’ve been very clear about that, and while it might be posturing the reasons they stated make perfect sense. Being a potential nuclear power already gives them all the nuclear deterrent they can hope for without a large scale nuclear program that would get them bombed by the West.
Not for lack of capacity. Not really sure why you think Israel intermittently dickwaving with Iran is preventing them from pursuing nuclear weapons, but they’ve spent the past 20 years or so continually increasing their capacity to the point of “We can make nuclear weapons in a very short amount of time”, so apparently the proxy war ‘working just fine’ has very little to do with restricting Iran’s access to nuclear weaponry. Or else the ‘proxy war’ is a total failure. Your call.
It’s estimated they have access to enough material for 3 weapons if they were to try to build them… and they’d be completely untested.
It’s working just fine.
Israel isn’t just dick waving, they’ve done everything from assassinating scientists to blowing up centrifuges with a targeted computer virus.
And it’s not working since again, Iran has nuclear capacity and actively chooses not to use it. I don’t think the proxy war with Israel has anything to do with them not having enough material.