Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to wean Israel off US military support within a decade as his country seeks to strengthen its ties with the Gulf states. He said this in an interview with CBS News broadcast on Sunday, excerpts of which were published earlier.
"I want to reduce to zero the US financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said that Israel receives about $3.8 billion in military aid from the US annually. The United States has agreed to provide a total of $38 billion in military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2028.
But it is "absolutely" the right time to possibly restart the financial relationship between the United States and Israel, Netanyahu said.
"I don't want to wait for the next Congress, he told CBS. I want to start now."
Israel has long enjoyed bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress for military aid, but support from lawmakers and the public has faltered since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Sixty percent of American adults have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, and 59 percent have little or no confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing in world affairs, according to a Pew survey conducted in March. Both percentages are up seven percentage points from a year earlier.
Netanyahu said that the deteriorating support for Israel in the United States "correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media".
He said that several countries, which he did not name, had "essentially manipulated" social media in a way that "hurt us badly," even though he personally does not believe in censorship.
Support for US President Donald Trump, a close ally of Netanyahu, has also declined since the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28.
The war has led to higher gasoline prices, which contributed to a rise in annual US inflation in March to the highest level since May 2023.
A significant factor in the higher fuel prices is Iran's restriction of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world's oil normally passes.
It was only after the war began that Israeli planners recognized Iran's ability to close the strait, Netanyahu said. "It took them a while to understand the magnitude of the risk that they now understand," he said.
In the "60 Minutes" interview, Netanyahu declined to discuss Israel's military plans or timetable in Iran, but he did address the potential consequences if Iran's leadership changes.
"If this regime is truly weakened or eventually overthrown, I think that's the end of Hezbollah, the end of Hamas, probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole structure of the terrorist network that Iran has built is collapsing," Netanyahu said.
When asked if it was possible to overthrow the Iranian regime, Netanyahu replied: "Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No."