DOES THE US SUPPORT ISRAEL? OR JIHAD? A simple-minded look at the numbers [PART 2]

Peloni:  Simple math raises questions about US support for Israel.

Francisco Gil-White | MOR | Feb 25, 2026

Image via MOR

If you didn’t read Part 1 yet, you may do so here:

https://franciscogilwhite.substack.com/p/tucker-carlson-qatar-and-does-the-us-support-israel-or-jihad

• Even with generous assumptions for counting weapons transfers to Israel, and restrictive assumptions for weapons transfers to Israel’s enemies, the latter are still getting six times more US weapons than Israel, in dollar terms.

• Why do people say that the US has a pro-Israel policy?
• NOTE: This article is a quick and simple read—2000 words. (The rest is appendices and footnotes.)

Prominent commentators on the political right have been defending what they call an ‘America First’ position. In general terms, this is supposed to mean that US policy should not be preoccupied with benefiting other countries unless that provides a return net benefit to the United States.

Stated broadly like that, ‘America First’ makes sense to me. But, in practice, ‘America Firsters’ do not seem to complain broadly about US policy around the world; rather, they complain mostly about the US’s allegedly pro-Israel policies, which, according to them, are bad for US citizens.

In my previous piece in this series, I have considered Tucker Qatarlson—excuse me, Carlson—because he is especially interesting. Even as he complains about the US’s alleged pro-Israel policy, he celebrates that a pro-Qatari US policy—even one that supports Qatar against Israel—is good for US citizens. And, defiantly, he declares that he’ll buy a home in Qatar “to make a statement that I’m an American and a free man.”1

Is the self-parody involuntary? Perhaps.

Or perhaps we are the innocents—and this is a dare. For Tucker Carlson’s real-estate investment in Qatar makes a rather different statement: that Carlson has now become a modern and literal slave master.

Don’t take it from me. This is what the New York Times wrote in a 2013 article titled ‘Indentured Servitude in the Persian Gulf’:

“Some 1.2 million foreign workers—mostly poor Asians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines—make up 94 percent of the labor force in Qatar, an absolute monarchy roughly the size of Connecticut.”2

Per the New York Times, save for a tiny handful of expatriate managers, those “foreign workers” in Qatar labor in a system of “indentured servitude.” Some academics more frankly call it “virtual slavery.” But that is still shy of the mark. These people cannot leave, many aren’t paid, and physical and sexual abuse are extensively documented. When no longer useful, they are discarded. Many experience hunger. Some die. These are slaves.

We explain that here:

Paradox: The anti-Qatar protests on US campuses

It is therefore slaves—literal slaves—who will be cleaning, maintaining, and servicing “American and free man” Tucker Carlson’s new Qatari residence.

Why is Tucker Carlson—at times ranked as the third-biggest podcaster—telling his giant audience that supporting jihadi Qatar against democratic Israel is compatible with ‘America First’?

That question must be addressed elsewhere. What concerns us here is the premise behind Carlson’s complaint. Is it really true that the US supposedly has had a pro-Israel policy? Restated in geopolitical, military terms:

• Is it true that the net effect of US policy is to protect Israel’s security interests?

One may investigate this question of alleged US support for Israel in different ways. For example, with strategic analysis of diplomacy, which characterizes much of my work. But one can also do simple arithmetic: add up the armament flows and compare. And that’s what I do here.

In my sample period, 2006-2025, as I show below, making the most generous assumptions to give the highest possible dollar-value estimate of US armament flows to Israel, I got 137 billion.

By contrast, despite ruling out US weapons transfers to the enemies of Israel when any doubt exists about the final intended recipient; despite excluding non-State actors such as Hamas and PLO/Fatah that convert US money received into armaments and salaries to kill Israeli Jews (see Appendix A); and despite excluding enemies relatively removed geographically from Israel, I still got $780.5 billion.

• Measured in dollars, Israel’s enemies receive almost six times more US armament than Israel.

This and other analyses within MOR raise some interesting questions. How come everyone thinks the US bosses have had a pro-Israel policy? And why aren’t ‘America Firsters’ complaining about all the US armament going to the jihadis?

But these questions are not our present quarry. Our present quarry is the universal mainstream allegation of a pro-Israel US policy, which does not survive the arithmetic.

The demonstration follows.

A few notes on method

This period includes three Republican administrations (George W. Bush’s second term, Donald Trump’s first term, and Donald Trump’s current term) and three Democratic administrations (Barack Obama’s two terms and Joe Biden’s term). The pattern is therefore bipartisan.

Figures are presented separately for 2006–2024 and for 2025 in order to clarify the continuity of the policy pattern into the second Trump administration.

Two methodological biases were implemented.

First, the tally for Israel’s enemies is deliberately conservative. Any transfers where ambiguity remains as to whether an enemy of Israel was the intended recipient were excluded (examples in the footnote).3

The list does not include the full set of Israel’s military adversaries, as the comparison is limited to States geographically proximate to Israel. For example, US armament and military training flows to Pakistan, and to Hamas or PLO/Fatah (the ‘Palestinian Authority’), are not included in the tally.

Second, the tally for Israel is deliberately expansive. Where ambiguity exists as to whether a US military expenditure should be included in Israel’s column, it is counted. There is even some double counting that I didn’t bother to tease out. The purpose is to avoid understating US armament flows to Israel.

The comparison therefore pits a conservative estimate for Israel’s enemies against an expansive estimate for Israel.

For this comparison, the States included as enemies of Israel are: Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. Interested readers will find my arguments for each State’s inclusion in this enemy list in Appendix A.

The numbers: a simple-minded presentation

I am documenting over 780 billion dollars to the enemies of Israel for the sample period 2006-2025.

For the period 2006-2024, you may perform a check on my numbers by consulting the following footnotes: Turkey4 ; Lebanon5 ; Syria6 ; Iraq (Iran)7 ; Jordan8 ; Saudi Arabia9 ; Qatar10 ; Egypt.11

For Donald Trump in 2025, you may perform a check on my numbers by consulting the following footnotes: Turkey12 ; Lebanon13 ; Syria ; Iraq (Iran)14 ; Jordan15 ; Saudi Arabia16 ; Qatar17 ; Egypt.18

Now, about Israel.

I have produced a maximum estimate of US weapons transfers to Israel. This Grand Total, for the period 2006-2025 inclusive, is 137 billion. (My sources in Appendix B.)

As stated earlier, in deriving this estimate I have used assumptions that are opposite to those employed in calculating the transfers to the enemies of Israel.

Any ambiguous figures were counted as flows to Israel, and there is even some double counting (I don’t know how much) where figuring out redundancies in the reports is difficult.

Even with these biases, we still have the following result:

• US weapons transfers to Israel’s enemies are almost six times larger than to Israel.

The most interesting number: US armament to Iraq

Here is another way of highlighting the drama of this number: even if Iraq were the only enemy of Israel getting armament transfers from the United States, this amount would still be more than four times larger than what the US has transferred to Israel in the same period.

Now, why is this especially significant? Well consider this headline:

That’s the Brookings Institution over at Stanford.19 Why do they say that “The Popular Mobilization Force [PMF] is turning Iraq into an Iranian client state”? Well, because

1. The PMF is commanded from Iran.
2. The PMF has taken over Iraq.

On the first point, consider that “Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, chief of staff of PMF and later deputy chairman of its Popular Mobilization Committee, cut his teeth with the IRGC and has always remained close to them.20 The Badr Brigade or Badr Corps, the largest chunk—by far—of the PMF, was born as the “the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shia Islamic party based in Iran,” described as “Khomeinist,” and “formed in 1982 and led by Iranian officers.”21

On the second point, consider what Brookings writes in the body of the article:

“Beyond its formidable presence in the Iraqi parliament, the PMF indirectly controls several ministries and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has exercised its influence over the country’s elections, government-formation rules, and Kurdish oil exports to suppress the PMF’s political rivals. Within the security forces, the Badr Brigade controls the Interior Ministry, and the PMF has a symbiotic relationship with some parts of the Iraqi security forces, including the military, where PMF officials have outsized authority.”

Caroline Rose of the New Lines Institute explains that “PMF control[s] … Iraqi transnational highways, military bases, and border patrol posts.”22

And since in “the [Iraqi] military … PMF officials have outsized authority,” US policymakers have been consciously sending $574 billion in US weapons to an Iranian-backed force.

I must quibble, however, with the editing of the title in the Brookings Institution article. They say that, under PMF control, Iraq is “turning … into” an “Iranian client state.” What do they mean by “turning … into”? It is done. In fact, this was over and done immediately after the US invasion of Iraq, because Iraq is 60% Shia, and the US-sponsored elections gave power to Iraqi Shiite forces controlled from Iran. Consider: “since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, most of the Badr Brigade fighters have entered the new Iraqi army and police force.”23

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq…

Crucially, this happened because

“the United States began encouraging [Badr] militants to join the ranks of the Iraqi Security Forces. Badr militants served as police, military, and intelligence forces.”24

The evidence suggests that this was all prearranged rather improvised. Though never mentioned again, at the time of the US invasion of Iraq it was reported in the International Herald Tribune (property of the New York Times) that the US military had taken the opportunity of bombing Iranian dissidents—enemies of the Iranian ayatollahs—who had established their bases in Iraq.25 And then US forces chased the survivors on land. A gift to the Iranian ayatollahs!

There was reciprocity. In the same time bracket, the Iranian ayatollahs were reported in the Financial Times to have exerted themselves mightily to assist—politically, materially, and militarily—the US invasion of Iraq.26

By 2006, The Guardian was describing the effect of the US invasion of Iraq as follows:

“Iran is the true winner of that war. They only had to sit tight and smile as the West delivered on a golden plate all the influence Iran had always sought in the Middle East. The US and its allies will soon be gone from Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving Iranian-backed Shias dominant in both countries, their influence well spread across Syria, a chunk of Saudi Arabia and other countries for decades to come. Historic Iranian ambitions have been fulfilled without firing a shot while the US is reduced to fist-shaking. How foolish was that?”27

Foolish…?

But if this had been a mistake the US would have ceased sending astronomical quantities of armament to Iranian-controlled Iraq. And yet no country on the planet has gotten more US armament in the last 10 years.

US policymakers are not confused about the Iranian control of post-invasion Iraq, which the academics at Brookings and the New Lines Institute, and the journalists at The Guardian, can plainly see. US authorities engineered the Iranian takeover of Iraq. And then they proceeded to arm Iraq to the hilt, which is effectively a way of arming Iran.

This is consistent with what was scandalously documented in the second half of the 1980s, during the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Reagan-Bush administration was caught red-handed transferring many billions of dollars in weapons, secretly, to the Iranian jihadi terrorists.

IRAN-CONTRA: STILL A MYSTERY. Part 1: Reagan, actor on a world stage.

The difference is that US weapons transfers to Iran now happen entirely in the open thanks to the media-assisted pretense that there is such thing as an ‘independent Iraq,’ when in reality Iraq is more accurately described—thanks to the US invasion—as the westernmost province of Iran.

To summarize:

• The United States has been knowingly transferring over 4 times more US armament to Iranian-backed forces than it has transferred to Israel.