Allies must repay all Iran war costs, Trump says, naming Israel too
Washington will seek compensation from the countries the United States protected in the Iran war, President Donald Trump has said. In a recently aired CBS News interview, he told host Ross Douthat: 'Those countries will meet all of the United States' costs in the war.'
Trump said: 'We will get this money back. They will pay it, one hundred percent. Because without us they would not exist.' For the first time, he also explicitly spoke of compensation from Israel. In his words, Israel would not exist without US military intervention.
The demand came after Trump and the Republican Party's heavy defeat in the midterm elections. The president acknowledged that public discontent over the Iran war played a partial role in that outcome. He has since declared the war effectively over militarily and called the decision to start it a very good decision.
Trump said: 'We cut off the head of their (Iran's) nuclear stockpile. If I had not done that, there would be no Israel now.' He had earlier sought costs from the Gulf countries that benefit from the US military presence around the Strait of Hormuz. In a briefing in July, he named Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The Gulf countries, however, say they were not even informed about the war plan. They also bore the brunt of Iran's retaliatory attacks. As members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), they have called for a diplomatic solution.
Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University and an associate fellow at Chatham House, said: 'Trump could present existing trade deals or Gulf investment as compensation.' Farid Bousaid of the University of Amsterdam said it would probably be indirect, taking the form of commercial investment in the United States and additional purchases of American weapons.
Trump has in the past also presented foreign investment as a gift. After a deal with the European Union in July 2025, he called 600 billion dollars a gift, although the deal only contained an expectation of investment by European companies. In his first term, he also claimed Mexico would pay for the border wall, which did not happen.
According to analysts, asking Gulf allies to pay more for a war they did not start will displease them. In their view, they will resist quietly, because they are already contributing to security costs. On Israel, Marzia Kouhi Esfahani of Durham University said asking it to bear the financial burden would go against established practice and Israel's current resource constraints.
