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President Donald Trump is considering asking Arab countries to cover the cost of the US-Israel war on Iran.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said: “I think it’s something the president would be quite interested in calling them to do.”
“I won’t get ahead of him on that, but certainly, it’s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you’ll hear more from him on,” Leavitt told reporters at a news briefing on Monday.
That would be similar to how US allies helped fund Washington’s intervention during the Gulf War in 1990.
Trump also indicated on Monday that he may be satisfied with bringing the war to a close even without the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. He suggested that “other partners” who rely more heavily on exports shipped through the narrow waterway should take on the burden of managing the crisis. Iran closed the chokepoint shortly after the war began at the end of February,
In peacetime, about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies are shipped through the strait. The war has forced the price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, as high as $116 per barrel this week compared with a pre-war price of about $65. That’s caused major supply concerns across the globe. However, the US is largely self-sufficient in energy supply.
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Leaders in Tehran have said that the US should pay reparations to compensate victims of the war in Iran as a condition for any ceasefire.
There has been no indication from Middle Eastern governments – particularly members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – about whether they are prepared to help fund the war. They have been directly affected by Iranian strikes on US military assets and infrastructure in their territories. Analysts say the overall cost remains unclear but could be tens of billions of dollars.
Experts pointed out that, unlike the 1990-1991 Gulf War, GCC and other Arab states did not ask the US to intervene in Iran before strikes began on February 28.
“This would have made sense if it was those GCC states that advocated for this war to happen but they actually advocated for the war not to happen in the lead-up to the war. They continue to call for diplomacy and de-escalation,” Zeidon Alkinani, founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, told Al Jazeera.
“The country that seems to be worthy to take and handle the costs would be Israel. The Israeli government … is the party and the agency that has convinced and pushed the United States to take this war on,” Alkinani added.
If the US were to press Arab countries to fund the war on Iran, it would not be the first time Washington has tried, often successfully, to make other nations pay for wars it has started or been heavily involved in.
In August 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, accusing leaders of overproducing oil to drive down prices and harming Iraq’s war-battered economy after the protracted conflict with Iran for much of the 1980s.
Iraq justified the invasion by reviving its longstanding territorial claim over Kuwait, dating back to Ottoman and British-era borders.
The Iraqi army rapidly overran Kuwait, occupying its capital within days and forcing the 13th emir of Kuwait to escape to Saudi Arabia. Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah led the Kuwaiti government in exile while Iraqi forces controlled his homeland.
In January 1991, the US led a global coalition of several dozen countries, including Western, Arab and other Muslim-majority states, to force out Iraqi forces at the request of Kuwait and several of its Gulf neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia. The invasion was named Operation Desert Storm.
“From a diplomatic perspective, these US actions also aligned with common goals: counterterrorism, sovereignty, international law, stability,” Nayana Prakash, research fellow on the international security programme at Chatham House in London, told Al Jazeera.
“Countries were willing to join because it was in their national interests to do so. Such coalitions often took joint, coordinated actions and then split the costs – albeit unevenly at times.”
The conflict lasted just over six weeks to the end of February 1991 and cost the coalition $61bn at the time – about $140bn today.
The war was mostly funded by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany and Japan. They provided $54bn, about 88 percent of the war cost.
The Saudis contributed most, $16.8bn covered 27 percent of the war costs. Kuwait provided $16bn or 26 percent.
Japan contributed $10bn (16 percent), Germany $6.4bn (10 percent), the UAE $4bn (6.5 percent) and South Korea $251m (0.5 percent).
The Pentagon said the US covered 12 percent of the total – $7.3bn.
World War II began when Adolf Hitler’s armed forces invaded Poland during Nazi expansionism in 1939.
Britain and France declared war a couple of days later.
Japan, which had already been at war in China since 1937, attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941. That provoked the US to declare war.
The second world war ended in 1945: Soviet troops captured Berlin and Germany surrendered; weeks later, the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, forcing their surrender, too.
From 1948 to 1951, the US implemented the Marshall Plan, to aid Europe’s recovery from the war devastation. The US provided more than $13bn to rebuild Western European economies and contain the spread of communist influence by the Soviet Union.
War reparations were also paid by Japan and Germany occupied by allied forces.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Japan paid more than $1bn to several Asian countries through a patchwork of bilateral treaties and “economic cooperation” agreements.
Germany paid tens of billions of dollars in reparations and compensation – there’s no universally agreed total.
While Japanese and German reparations did not go to the US, both countries have spent billions of dollars on US military bases on their territories since World War II. Japan spends about $1.4bn a year and Germany more than $1bn annually.
Russia’s ongoing war in neighbouring Ukraine began in February 2022 when Russian forces invaded.
While it was not an instigator of the conflict, the US was at first a main ally of Ukraine, providing military support to counter Russian attacks.
The US committed the largest amount of aid to Ukraine – 114.6 billion euros ($134bn) – from January 2022 to June 2025.
That included 64.6 billion euros ($75bn) in military aid, 46.6 billion euros ($54bn) in financial aid and 3.4 billion ($4bn) in humanitarian aid.
The European Union has been the second biggest donor at 63.2 billion euros ($74bn), followed by Germany (21.3 billion euros ($25bn), the United Kingdom $21bn and Japan $15bn.
At the same time, Washington has urged European allies to supply weapons to Ukraine and ramp up their own defence spending, helping drive US foreign arms sales to a record $318.7bn in 2024.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has withdrawn 99 percent of US support to Kyiv, shifting the financial burden to European nations instead.
Rather than provide aid, Washington is now selling weapons to Ukraine’s European allies. For example, the US struck a deal with Germany last July to buy American air defence systems such as Patriot missiles to send to Ukraine.
Also in July, Trump approved $10bn in arms sales for Ukraine, paid for by its European allies.
He told reporters that after spending billions to help Ukraine since 2022, “we’re getting our money back in full”.
The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker shows that support to Ukraine has remained stable since the withdrawal of nearly all US funding because Europe has ramped up its support by about two-thirds.
In 2025, Europe contributed about $70bn in military and financial aid to Ukraine, while the US contribution fell to $400m.
Nayana Prakash, research fellow at Chatham House, said that while the White House has invoked the past to justify a potential cost-sharing request, the current conflict in Iran is not the same.
“Current US military actions do not have the same international or domestic support,” Prakash added.
“Countries must now weigh whether aligning, or further aligning, with the US is in their interests.”
She explained that Washington will have to make the case that its actions in Iran further the interests of others and that the costs of aligning with the US outweigh alternative options.
