Netanyahu wants to wean Israel off US military support, he tells CBS
By Jonathan Stempel
May 10 (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to rid Israel of U.S. military support within a decade, he said in an interview published on Sunday, as his country seeks to strengthen ties with Gulf states.
“I want to reduce American financial support to zero, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” Netanyahu told CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
Netanyahu said Israel receives approximately $3.8 billion in US military aid annually. The United States has agreed to provide a total of $38 billion in military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2028.
But Netanyahu said it was “absolutely” the right time to reset the US-Israeli financial relationship.
“I don’t want to wait for the next Congress,” he told CBS. “I want to start now.”
Israel has long had a bipartisan consensus in the US Congress on military aid, but support from lawmakers and the public has weakened since the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.
Sixty percent of U.S. adults have a negative view of Israel, and 59% have little or no confidence that Netanyahu will do the right thing on world affairs, according to a March Pew poll. Both percentages increased by seven points compared to the previous year.
Netanyahu said the decline in support for Israel in the United States is “almost 100 percent related to the geometric rise of social media.”
While he personally doesn’t believe in censorship, he said many countries he did not name are “fundamentally manipulating” social media in ways that “hurt us badly.”
NO TIMING IN IRAN
Support for US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu’s close ally, has also waned since the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28.
The war led to rising gasoline prices, which contributed to US inflation rising on an annual basis in March to its highest level since May 2023.
A major factor behind high fuel prices has been Iran’s restriction of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil normally passes.
Netanyahu said Israeli planners realized Iran’s ability to close the strait only after the war began. “It took them a while to understand how big that risk was, and they understand that now,” he said.
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Netanyahu declined to discuss Israel’s military plans or timetable in Iran but touched on potential consequences if Iran’s leadership changes.
“If this regime is really weakened or overthrown, I think it means the end of Hezbollah, the end of Hamas, possibly the end of the Houthis, because the entire scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran has built is collapsing,” Netanyahu said.
When asked whether it was possible to overthrow the Iranian regime, Netanyahu said: “Is it possible? Yes. Guaranteed? No.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Sergio Non, Paul Simao and Lincoln Feast)
