Israel expects President Trump to immediately lift the Biden administration’s pause on supplying 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs to the country, according to a new report.
The outgoing Israeli ambassador to the United States, Mike Herzog, told Axios on Monday that he expects the 47th president to reverse the US weapons-supply ban within his first few days back in the White House.
“We believe that Trump is going to release, at the beginning of his term, the munitions that haven’t been released until now by the Biden administration,” Herzog said.
Former President Joe Biden had halted a shipment of the 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May amid fears their potential use in Gaza could result in mass civilian casualties.
The US had previously delivered more than 10,000 of the widely destructive bombs — known as “bunker busters” because they can reach deep underground before detonating — to Israel during the war.
The ban allegedly sparked one of the biggest crises in US-Israel relations since the Jewish state’s war with Hamas started Oct. 7, 2023.
The potential bomb-ban reversal is among a number of immediate moves Israeli officials believe Trump will take regarding the Israel-Hamas war, according to the outlet.
The report emerged as Trump signed an executive order Monday to temporarily suspend all US foreign-assistance programs for 90 days in a bid to determine if they are still aligned with “American values.”
The move could potentially permanently ax funding to the infamous UN relief agency UNRWA, which provides $1.5 billion a year to Palestinians and which Israel claims is staffed with Hamas terrorists.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” states the Trump order — one of many signed on his first day in office.
“They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries,” the order says.
As a result, “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States,” the directive says.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much assistance would initially be frozen, given funding for many of the potentially affected many programs has already been doled out by Congress and is obligated to be spent — if it hasn’t been already.
The US was already banned from providing aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees under a bill signed by former President Joe Biden last year.
The year-long Biden suspension extends through March.
The funding cut by the Biden administration was announced soon after it emerged that the agency had fired a dozen staffers amid allegations they took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel.
Trump’s new order will leave it up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to determine, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, how foreign-aid dollars are spent.
During his confirmation hearing last week, Rubio said, “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions.
“Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” he said.
Some of the biggest recipients of US assistance are unlikely to see dramatic reductions — including Israel, which currently receives about $3.3 billion per year.
With Post wires
