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.
Just a reminder, $18 billion is around $56 per US citizen.
And a second reminder, that a direct war against Iran (via Israel) or Russia (via Ukraine) would cost probably two orders of magnitude more money than fighting them via proxy like what’s currently happening.
Proxy wars are cheap and do a lot of damage to our enemies.
The only country in this conflict who actually wants the conflict is Israel. It’s quite clear Iran has been doing it’s best to hold back for the past year to avoid escalation. They don’t want a war any more than Americans do.
I get your point on Russia but Iran? War with the US is the absolute last thing Iran wants, which is clear from their foreign policy decisions for the last… Forever, really. America has problems with Iran because they won’t do what the US tells them to, not because there’s any risk of Iran starting a war of any kind.
There is absolutely a major risk of Iran starting wars of several kinds. The difference between Russia and Iran is that the Russian government wishes to see the US cratered to give it and its allies free reign to do whatever horrific shite they please. They actively desire a diminished US on the world stage and domestically, both on ideological and strategic grounds.
Iran, on the other hand, just wants to play its shithead proxy war games in the Middle East against the Saudis and Israel. If the US had no interest in backing those two, Iran would be indifferent to the US except insofar as we can be used as a boogeyman to tamper down internal dissent (a technique that has become less effective in recent generations).
Regardless of whether we have any legitimate business in backing Israel or the Saudis, or in trying to prevent destabilization of the Middle East, Iran very much would be picking fights absent the US, just as it is with the US present in the region. The Islamic Republic is not some isolationist or benevolent state. They’re as bad as the Saudis (who are constantly picking proxy war fights across the Middle East).
Oh shit I braintarted that sentence; I should have added “with the US”. With that said, I agree with pretty much everything you said so allow me to nitpick a bit.
First, I don’t see Iran starting any direct wars with anyone when their proxies are willing to do all the work for them. This is a common tactic in the region because it works, destabilizing effects on your surroundings aside.
Second, I don’t think the US is trying to prevent the destabilization of anything. If anything an unstable Middle East is in their interests to the extent it doesn’t cause a refugee crisis for Europe.
Third and last, while Iran is definitely pretty bad, I think they’re one genocide and a few hundred thousand slaves short of being as bad as Saudi Arabia. Again, I’m no fan of them, and weaker Iranian influence would be good for the Middle East as a whole as long as it doesn’t lead to (or be caused by) stronger US influence, but Saudi Arabia is just that evil. Iranian is a more typical dictatorship vying for local hegemony.
Don’t know that they’re actually short the genocide, considering Iran’s backing of Syria, and the US definitely has an interest in a Middle East that is not in open war because of the effects of instability on international trade and the domestic political blowback from that, but otherwise I think we’re in agreement.
Oh shit you might be right, but does Assad have any genocides under his belt? I thought the worst he did was gassing his own citizens.
I was thinking unstable as in unstable dictatorships dependent on US support to keep their citizens down ala Egypt. I agree they generally don’t want open war in the region.
There is a very strong ethnic component to the ongoing civil war. There’s been a lot of ethnic cleansing and massacres supported by both sides - but obviously, as we’re discussing the Syrian government, Assad’s government being the important genocidal actor in this conversation. Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias have been… particularly vigorous in this.
I see. Yeah that makes sense.
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.
Politicians need to be honest about why they do things. Let people make up their minds based on actual politics instead of false narratives.
Politicians need to be honest about what they’re afraid of happening if they don’t support Israel.
Citizens need to be educated and informed. That shouldn’t come from politicians.
That’s nice, neither Iran nor Russia cares about the US nor wants to attack us, neither ever did until we started attacking them preemptively.
I, as an American citizen have no enemies, neither do you. If the US government has made enemies, and it has, it did so without my permission, endorsement, or allowance.
Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
Yeah, you. Why does Russia want trump in office? To leave them the fuck alone. Why does Russia openly want a weaker US? The same reason 140+ countries want a weaker US, so they get left the fuck alone.
The US has conducted hostile military operations in over 100countries over the last 30 years without declaring war once. If Russia did that, we’d nuke them. Fuck MAD, we’d go for the nuke regardless at that point.
Everyone outside the EU wants a weaker US for one specific reason. It’s not our " freedom" or way of life or capitalism (ok a lil bit of it is capitalism) it’s the fact we are the most belligerent country to have ever existed in human history.
You’re not special; Ivan wankenstainofsky doesn’t give a shit about you or anything you have ever done or will ever do. They want the US government to stop playing world police just because the American populace is too stupid to stop their own government.
Fucking lol
I guess fascist propaganda doesn’t even need to try to be vaguely believable anymore. But hey, anything to cheerlead for genocide in Ukraine, right?
A generic war isn’t genocide, and you people don’t get to coopt the word genocide just because Israel took away your spotlight.
More over… It’s not our problem. We are not the world police. We suck at that job, given we tend to kill 10-20x more civil loans than whoever were supposedly there to kill.
Yeah it sucks Ukraine is getting invaded again it did that a thousand times before I was born it’ll do that a thousand more times at least after I die. You know what also sucks? Homelessness exclusively due to corporate greed. The former we can’t solve, the latter we can and should before temporarily stopping a different country from invading yet another different country.
Wow, generic wars have hundreds of thousands, by Russia’s own admission, children being ethnically cleansed from a region and deported to the invading country to shore up their own flagging demographics? Generic wars have kill lists of political figures, including LGBT advocates, distributed to the invader’s forces? Generic wars have civilians with their hands tied and shot in the back of the head en masse in occupied territories?
Let me guess - you’re an Uyghur Genocide denier too, right?
Ah, yes, nichevo.
You keep getting off topic because I don’t care about your pet topic.
I don’t care, even a little about myanmars genocide. Or the genocide in sudan. Or whatever Russia is doing or whatever gobbledyfuck the third, the warlord of east genovia is doing to puppies and children.
Maybe if I hadn’t struggled my entire life while watching people get dumped by the US government, sent to the ME to do war crimes, and luckily come back home only to kill themselves after they learned how pointless their sacrifice was, may e id care about your pet topic of a sovereign country that is not us and is not funded by us invade another country that again is not us.
Maybe if I hadn’t watched multiple of my family members die of preventable diseases thanks to not having access to healthcare even after “Obamacare” supposedly solved that problem, id care enough about your pet topic to support sending billions to be wasted on yet another war.
I haven’t been to a doctor in my adult life. Id love to go, but the copay on my free insurance is half a weeks pay, before any tests. Id love to spend that but I’ve never paid less than half my monthly wage in rent. The money isn’t there for me to give a fuck anymore. We spent 20trillion on Afghanistan and Iraq, theyre same shit holes they were, with a couple million fewer civilians and more birth defects per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Your pet topic wouldnt end any differently.
Thanks for admitting to being indifferent to genocide. Keep cheering on Palestinian genocide as well, I’m sure you don’t care about that either. That’s about the level of moral fiber I expected from someone who denies the Ukrainian and Uyghur genocides.
You do have enemies. Many countries would love to hurt you and your way of life. Those countries have shown that they like hurting other countries, they just tend pick on the smaller ones right now. China is attacking Canada economically for example. They’d love to do the same to the US, but currently the cost is too high. If that math ever changes, you will also be attacked.
Genuinely I don’t think there’s hope for you or people like you. We need to take nukes away from you people immediately. I’m usually for nuclear proliferation since it’s the only way to not get invaded by the us, but wherever you are shouldn’t have that protection until you actually understand what being a victim is.