White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said President Donald Trump is considering asking Arab countries to pay for the US-Israel war against Iran.
“I think it’s something that the president would be very interested in calling on them as well,” Levitt said at a news conference Monday.
“I’m not going to get ahead of him in that regard, but I certainly know that it’s an idea that he has, and I think we’re going to hear more from him in the future.”
Such a mechanism would be similar to how US allies financed Washington’s intervention during the 1990 Gulf War.
On Monday, President Trump also suggested he might be satisfied with ending the war even without the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that “other partners” who rely more on exports shipped through the narrow waterway, which Iran closed shortly after the war began in late February, should take responsibility for managing the crisis.
In normal times, about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies are transported through the strait. As a result, the price of Brent crude oil, the world benchmark, rose from around $65 per barrel before the war to $116 per barrel this week, causing major supply concerns around the world. However, the United States is nearly self-sufficient in these resources.
The Iranian government said that as a condition of the cease-fire taking effect, the United States should pay reparations to compensate victims of the Iranian war.
So far, there has been no indication from Middle Eastern governments, especially those in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) directly affected by Iranian attacks on US military assets and infrastructure in their territories, whether they are prepared to help finance the war. Analysts say the total cost could reach tens of billions of dollars and is still unclear.
Unlike the 1990-1991 Gulf War, the GCC and other Arab states did not ask the United States to intervene against Iran before the Feb. 28 attack began, experts noted.
“This would have made sense if it were the GCC countries that were advocating for this war, but in fact they were advocating for it not to happen prior to the war. They continue to call for diplomacy and détente,” Zeidun al-Kinani, founding director of the Arab Outlook Institute, told Al Jazeera.
“The country that would be suitable to take on that cost and handle it would be Israel. The Israeli government…is the party and institution that persuaded the United States and encouraged it to continue this war,” al-Kinani added.
If the United States pressured Arab countries to finance a war against Iran, this would not be the first time the United States has attempted (often successfully) to make another country pay for a war it started or was deeply involved in.
gulf war
In August 1990, then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Kuwait, accusing the country of overproducing oil to lower prices and harming its war-torn neighbor’s economy to the north after a long conflict with Iran for much of the 1980s.
Iraq also revived long-standing claims to Kuwait dating back to Ottoman and British-era borders to justify the invasion.
Iraqi forces rapidly overran Kuwait, capturing the capital within days and forcing Kuwait’s 13th emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, to flee to Saudi Arabia, where he led a government in exile while Iraqi forces controlled the country.
In January 1991, at the request of Kuwait and several Gulf neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United States led a global coalition of dozens of countries, including Western countries, Arab states, and other Muslim-majority countries, to forcibly remove Iraqi forces. This invasion was named “Operation Desert Storm.”
The conflict lasted just over six weeks, with the main fighting phase lasting from mid-January to the end of February 1991. Allied losses from the war were $61 billion at the time, the equivalent of about $140 billion today.
Most of the funding for the war’s progress was provided by a group of nations consisting of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and Japan. Together, they provided $54 billion, about 88 percent of the war’s cost.
Most of these contributions were made by Saudi Arabia, which at the time paid $16.8 billion, or 27% of the war cost, and Kuwait, which provided $16 billion, or 26% of the war cost.
Japan invested $10 billion (16%), Germany $6.4 billion (10%), the UAE $4 billion (6.5%), and South Korea $251 million (0.5%).
According to figures released by the Pentagon in the early 1990s, the United States paid 12 percent ($7.3 billion) of the war’s costs.
After World War II
World War II officially began with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 during Nazi expansionism.
As a result, Britain and France declared war on Germany a few days later.
Japan had already been at war with China since 1937, and in 1941 attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This drew the United States into the war.
The war ended in 1945. Soviet troops occupied Berlin and Germany surrendered. A few weeks later, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and Japan also surrendered.
From 1948 to 1951, the United States implemented the Marshall Plan, a U.S. aid program to rebuild Europe from the ravages of war. The United States provided more than $13 billion in economic aid to rebuild Western European economies and contain Soviet influence.
However, war reparations were also paid by Japan and Germany, which had no choice but to accept the occupation.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Japan paid more than $1 billion to several Asian countries through a patchwork of bilateral treaties and “economic cooperation” agreements.
Germany paid tens of billions of dollars in compensation and compensation. However, there is no single universally agreed upon total value.
Japanese and German reparations were not paid to the United States, but both countries have spent billions of dollars maintaining U.S. military bases on their territory since World War II. Japan spends about $1.4 billion a year on these infrastructures, and Germany spends more than $1 billion a year.
ukraine war
Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine began in February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighboring country.
Although the United States was not the instigator of the conflict, it was initially a key ally of Ukraine, providing military support to Kiev to counter Russian aggression.
In fact, the United States has pledged the largest amount of aid to Ukraine, 114.64 billion euros ($134 billion), from January 24, 2022 to June 30, 2025.
This includes 64.6 billion euros ($75 billion) in military aid, 46.6 billion euros ($54 billion) in financial aid and 3.4 billion euros ($4 billion) in humanitarian aid.
The European Union was the second largest donor with 63.19 billion euros ($74 billion), followed by Germany (21.29 billion euros or $25 billion), the United Kingdom (18.6 billion euros or $21 billion) and Japan (13.57 billion euros or $15 billion).
at the same time, Washington has encouraged its European allies to supply Ukraine with weapons and increase their own defense spending, helping push U.S. foreign arms sales to a record $318.7 billion in 2024.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has withdrawn 99% of US aid and instead shifted the financial burden to European countries.
The US government is now selling weapons to Ukraine’s European allies rather than providing aid. For example, in July, the United States and Germany signed an agreement that allows Germany to purchase American air defense systems, such as the Patriot system, and make them available to Ukraine.
That same month, President Trump announced that he had authorized $10 billion in arms sales to Ukraine to be paid by Ukraine’s European allies.
He told reporters that he had spent billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since 2022, but “all of that money is coming back.”
The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine aid tracker found that aid to Ukraine has stabilized since nearly all U.S. funding was withdrawn, as Europe increased aid by about two-thirds.
In 2025, Europe contributed about $70 billion in military and financial aid to Ukraine, while the U.S. contribution was reduced to $400 million.
