Trump Won’t Cut Egypt’s Military Aid, and Ethiopia’s Su-35s Show Why
US aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion a year, will survive Trump’s 3 November pledge to end Israel’s aid. A cut now would cost Washington its leverage in Cairo.
In this article
Trump ended Israel’s aid. Egypt’s is not next
The United States will not cut its $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Egypt, even though Donald Trump has now said that Israel’s aid ends this year. Washington needs Cairo too much, and the timing could hardly be worse: Russian Su-35 fighters have just reached Ethiopia, Egypt’s rival on the Nile, while American promises of fighters and missiles to Egypt are still unfulfilled. A cut now would cost America its hold on Egypt, not cost Egypt its army.
Trump made the announcement on 3 November, election day, in a telephone interview on Fox & Friends. “We were giving them $4 billion, we are, but it gets cut off at the end of the year,” he said of Israel. Asked why, he answered: “Because they don’t need it.” Israel, he said, is “a very thriving country”, and he asked why the United States should take criticism from “lunatics like El-Sayed”, a reference to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat who ran for Michigan’s Senate seat on a promise to end aid to Israel.
The remark hit Cairo hard, for a simple reason. Egypt’s aid and Israel’s were born together, at Camp David. If the larger half of that bargain is cancelled, Egyptians are entitled to ask whether their half goes with it. The answer is no, and the reasons show who needs whom in the Middle East today.
“A cut now would cost America its hold on Egypt, not cost Egypt its army.”
Key takeaways
- Trump said on 3 November that the roughly $4 billion a year Israel receives ends at the close of 2026, two years before the 2016 aid agreement runs out. Congress, not the president alone, has to make that happen.
- Egypt’s $1.3 billion comes from the same 1979 peace settlement, but it buys Washington concrete services: priority passage through the Suez Canal, Egyptian airspace for American warplanes and close intelligence cooperation.
- Cutting it as Ethiopia takes delivery of Russian Su-35s, after Washington blocked Egypt’s own Su-35 purchase and never delivered the F-15s it promised instead, would push Cairo toward Russian and Chinese weapons.
- Silent Dossier’s judgment: Washington will not cut Egypt’s aid. Cairo should wait and see, and avoid any quarrel with America while it does.
Why does the US give Egypt military aid?
The aid is the price of the Egyptian-Israeli peace. After the Camp David Accords of September 1978, Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty in Washington on 26 March 1979. The idea, pursued by Jimmy Carter and prepared by Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy after the 1973 war, was simple: paying both sides to keep the peace would cost the United States far less than paying for the next Arab-Israeli war. Israel and Egypt became the two largest recipients of American military aid.
Egypt’s share has barely moved since. It receives about $1.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing, grants that must be spent on American weapons such as F-16 fighters, M1A1 Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters, so much of the money returns to US factories. Israel’s aid, by contrast, has been renegotiated upward in successive ten-year agreements. The current memorandum, signed under Barack Obama in 2016, gives Israel $3.8 billion a year from 2019 to 2028: $3.3 billion in weapons grants and $500 million for missile defence. That annual sum is close to Egypt’s entire yearly military budget.
Inflation has done the rest. A dollar promised in 1979 is worth a fraction of that today, so Egypt’s fixed $1.3 billion has become close to symbolic for an army of Egypt’s size, while Israel’s grew with every new agreement. For the full breakdown of Israel’s package, see how Trump’s decision affects the $3.8 billion Israel receives.
Analysis
What Washington gets for $1.3 billion a year
Egypt’s aid stopped being charity long ago. It is a trade, and America does well out of it. When a US warship arrives at the Suez Canal, Egypt gives it priority passage, halting other traffic so that it moves through first, as an Egyptian warship would. Egypt opens its airspace to American military aircraft: in the Iran war, US planes flying from America to Israel or to bases in the Gulf have crossed Egyptian skies. Commercial and intelligence coordination between the two countries runs deep.
Israel’s aid works differently. Washington pays it because Israel is at war and because America has committed itself to Israel’s defence. Egypt’s aid pays for access, influence and cooperation that the United States uses every week.
Right now Washington also needs Egypt as a mediator. Its main regional ally, Israel, has set fires across the region; Egypt is the ally trying to put them out, through its intelligence service’s contacts with Iran, with the Houthis and with the Gulf states. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as much in a letter to Congress dated 21 September 2026, when he waived human rights conditions on $320 million of Egypt’s military aid and cited Egypt’s role as a key mediator between the United States and Iran. A partner doing that work is not one that Washington can afford to lose.
Analysis
Is Trump serious about ending Israel’s aid?
Benjamin Netanyahu opened the door himself. In January 2026 the Israeli prime minister said he wanted to taper American military aid to zero within ten years, arguing that Israel’s economy would reach about a trillion dollars in that time. Trump has now taken him at his word: on live television, unprompted and with a deadline. This was not a post that can be blamed on a hacked account later. He raised it himself.
Israel does need the money, whatever Netanyahu says. Its F-35I Adir fleet, a modified version of the American stealth fighter, is costly to keep flying, from the special care its coating requires after every sortie to its expensive weapons. Each time Israel runs short of munitions, as in its campaigns in Lebanon, it turns to the United States and pays with this aid. Without it, Israel would struggle to fight a wide war on several fronts or to push deep on the ground. Israel’s press reacted with alarm, much of it blaming Netanyahu, and the government gave no sign that it had been warned.
Trump’s motives are not hard to read. Democrats accuse him of putting Israel ahead of America and of fighting Israel’s war. The Iran war, which began on 28 February 2026 and was sold as a six-week campaign, is now in its ninth month; the US Central Command put its cost at $47.1 billion as of 16 October, including about $29 billion to replace munitions. Trump wants Netanyahu to answer for that bill. He spoke after it was clear his party was losing the House and Senate, and with the pro-Israel lobby’s weight in Washington visibly declining. He may also want to rein in Israel so that it cannot start wars on its own and wreck a deal with Iran.
The decision is not final. Congress appropriates the money, so the president’s words have to become law. A Republican-controlled Congress sitting in December could refuse. The new Congress that convenes in January has a Democratic majority, and many of its members support ending the aid, so the odds of a cut are far better then. Trump can also reverse himself: if Iran strikes Israel again, the United States will have to reinforce Israel, because America uses it as a main base for operations against Iran. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who has broken with Trump, called the announcement an election-night ploy. For the wider picture of Trump’s last months with a Republican Congress, see why a lame-duck Trump may strike Iran before January.
Analysis
Would cutting Israel’s aid mean cutting Egypt’s?
The logic of Camp David points that way. Egypt is the other party to the treaty; if the stronger party, the one with the closer ties to Washington, loses its aid, Egypt’s could follow. That is the risk Cairo has to take seriously.
But look at the moment America would be choosing. On 28 October, at the Russia-Africa summit in Moscow, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that Ethiopia had received its first twelve Su-35 fighters, a year ahead of schedule, and that four S-400 air defence batteries would follow. Russia’s arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, spoke of a first batch of two aircraft. Ethiopia is Egypt’s rival in the long dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the Blue Nile dam that Egypt sees as a threat to its water and that Ethiopia inaugurated in September 2025, and Abiy is now shopping for even more advanced jets.
Egypt tried to buy the very same aircraft. It signed for Su-35s with Russia in 2018. In 2019 Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, then America’s secretary of state and defence secretary, warned Egypt’s defence minister in writing that the purchase could bring sanctions under CAATSA, the law punishing major arms deals with Russia. Washington offered something better instead: in March 2022 General Kenneth McKenzie, then head of US Central Command, told the Senate that the United States would provide Egypt with F-15s. Egypt did not get the Su-35, and America did not deliver the F-15. The AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, cleared for Egypt in July 2025 as part of a $4.67 billion NASAMS air defence package, have still not reached Egypt. Many other deals promised to the Egyptian army have not been honoured either.
So a cut now would put more pressure on the American leadership than on the Egyptian one. Washington would be withdrawing its main lever over Cairo at the very moment Egypt’s army is under pressure to modernise, because Ethiopia is building up its forces.
There is a second danger. Cutting Israel’s aid also weakens America’s leverage over Israel, and that leverage is the main guarantee of the Camp David peace. An Israel that says it makes its own weapons and owes Washington nothing is freer to take reckless decisions that could set the whole region alight. That, too, would force Egypt to prepare for war.
Analysis
What Egypt’s army would do
Imagine the reply from Cairo the day after a cut. You cut the aid? Fine. We will buy from Russia and from China. Fourth-generation fighters, Chinese J-10Cs, Russian weapons. Do not talk to us about sanctions. We are preparing for war, and you walked away from us over aid that was symbolic anyway.
The scene is imagined. The incentives it describes are real. The Camp David peace is losing its guarantor, Ethiopia is arming, and an Egypt stripped of American aid would have no reason left to refuse what Moscow and Beijing are offering. Washington spent years keeping Russian fighters out of Egypt; ending the aid would undo that work in a single budget.
Why Washington will not cut Egypt’s aid
Silent Dossier’s view is that America will not cut Egypt’s aid. First, the sums are different in kind: with Israel, Washington is talking about $4 billion a year; with Egypt, about $1 billion. Second, Trump is the president who has paid Egypt’s aid in full. Under Joe Biden, the State Department held back slices of it over human rights conditions, $130 million in 2021 and $85 million in 2023. Trump’s administration has released it in full; Rubio’s September waiver freed the $320 million that had been conditioned. The man who restored the full aid is not the man who will cancel it.
Third, Egypt must not be drawn into a quarrel with the United States now, and Washington must not lose Egypt now. Trump’s announcement was a political move. He may follow through on Israel or retreat; he has many ways to do either. Egypt’s policy should be to wait and see. If Washington ever does cut the aid, Cairo will thank it and act on its own, and it will be America, not Egypt, that loses its hold on the most populous Arab state.
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