Rewriting the U.S.-Israel MOU | feat. Samuel Ben-Ur

(upbeat music) - Good morning, it's Friday, October 30th. The Multi-Front War in the Middle East is now 1,100 and 19 days old, but you know, who's counting. I'm your host, Jonathan Schanzer. Welcome back to the FDD morning brief. Some wild news out of Israel yesterday, and I'm really still trying to make sense of it. Reports of potential interference by the Qatar government in the Israeli elections, reports that they were paying Arab Israelis to go vote for the Arab parties. The Arab sector, as we know, came out to vote in record numbers, 19 seats as we now count them. We've seen some hedging on this story. It's possible that the BB camp simply made it up, which would be disgusting. And I must say, I hope these reports are in fact flat wrong, because this would be terrible for Israel, terrible for the Arab Israeli community, more confusion, more chaos in the Middle East. Look, as for the Qatari angle, let's just say, wouldn't surprise me in the least, but for now anyway, it looks as if they stayed out of Israel's elections, even as they continue to spread corruption and terror all over the region. But baby, if this was you, shame on you. His ball of chief, Naim Kossim, is taking heat in the Lebanese media for comments. He made earlier this week. And while those comments were provocative, they really were par for the course. Here's a quote, the resistance will continue and will stand up to the aggression directed against it and against Lebanon. He added, as long as the occupation persists and its aggression continues, that's a quote too. Yes, that's a big bowl of shia jihadi word salad, not even organic word salad. But it was the blistering response from an unnamed Lebanese official that got my attention. Kossim statement, this official said, constitutes a flagrant departure from the collective national will, a further persistence in imposing a fate of complete and a continuation of adventures that have brought Lebanon nothing but destruction, displacement and collapse, that's another direct quote. The actual words here are not the point. They are as exciting as a poetry slam in Brooklyn. What's notable here is that it's a debate about his ballas malign role in Lebanon and it's busting out into the open. This is a debate about the sovereignty of Lebanon, a debate about his ballas occupation of the state, about Iran's occupation of the state. It's not about Israel, it's not about this particular war, it's about ending the status quo. Look, I obviously don't know how any of this ends and I continue to have serious doubts about the Lebanese armed forces. I question whether they are willing to stand up to his balla, but this debate is an important one. Let's have more of it, please, and thanks. Now for your headlines, headline one, Qatar is reportedly hard at war trying to overt renewed fighting between the US and Iran after the midterm elections next week. Doha is apparently floating a deal that would provide Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for allowing UN inspectors to visit Iran's nuclear facilities. Gee, if only someone else had thought of this earlier, like maybe 11 years ago, during the 2015 nuclear deal that Obama brokered and then collapsed, which was just a dumpster fire. Come on, Doha, get creative here. Meanwhile, the Sunni alliance that some are now calling step, this is Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, they all want Doha to keep pushing for more banality in the peacemaking department. They're urging White House officials to give diplomacy a chance, despite this push, all signs point to renewed conflict after the US election, if not before, because hey, why would the Iranians want to abide by our timeline? And line two, the Houthis may be lacing their munitions with the legal chemical substances. Local officials in Ta'iz, Yemen's third largest city, one in investigation, civilians and soldiers trapped in the city, which the Houthis B.C., to earlier this month, have reportedly suffered severe breathing difficulties in some of even lost consciousness in areas shelved by the Houthis Yemen's information minister implored the UN and the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons or O.B.C. to investigate these alleged chemical attacks. Headline three, Australia wants to build out its missile defense shield, and is reportedly interested in Israel's Iron Dome technology, specifically Canberra, has reportedly been in touch with Washington about the cost and timeline for acquiring Skyhunter, which is a US version of the Israeli-Tumbia interceptor, Iron Dome. The Australian Defense Ministry understandably, once a proven off-the-shelf system, and our friends down under plan to make a choice by the end of 2027. But here is the part that I have to just point out that Australia has been very critical of Israel's war in Gaza, and they were even making noise about not selling arms to Israel, but now, hey, they might buy them. What a crock. Headline four, the IDF is expanding its counterterrorism missions in the West Bank, in case you missed it, a shooting attack last Friday in your Hebron, killed two IDF soldiers and injured five others in response, Israeli forces launched operations in and around Hebron and Nablus, which is additional stronghold for Hamas in Judea and Samaria. Over the last week, the IDF has searched hundreds of locations and arrested some 40 suspects. In Hebron, soldiers found a 15-meter deep tunnel near the home of one of the terrorists responsible for last Friday's attack. Tunneling, I don't like to see that in Judea and Samaria. I'll also say it again, I don't like how the tensions are building up there in the West Bank, folks. This is no time for another front to go hot in this war. All right, time to introduce today's guest. Samuel Ben Orr is one of Captain E's finest. He's a talented research analyst. He works on a range of Middle East issues from God's at a Christian persecution, but today I want to talk to Sam about US-Israel relations and the memorandum of understanding, the MOU, that is yet to be written or signed. Sam helped me prepare for my debate last week with Ambassador Michael Orrin at the 92nd Street William Manhattan about the upsides and downsides of US assistance to Israel. And as I quickly learned, Sam knows more about this issue than the average bear. He knows more about it than I do. This is a hugely important topic and it's clearly heating up. So let's do this. Let's get ahead of the curve. Let's bring Samuel Ben Orr onto the show. Welcome to the FDA Morning Green, Sam Ben Orr. - Thanks for having me, good to be on. - All right, I see the ground control headphones. You're ready to dial in. All right, let's start with the basics. What is the US-Israel memorandum of understanding? What is the MOU? And how does it shape America's military relationship with Israel? - Yeah, so this most current one is actually the third iteration of a deal originally signed in 1999. And it guarantees nothing, actually. But it signals that America intends to provide Israel with a certain amount of military assistance. That still has to be approved by Congress and an appropriations bill. So it's not technically a binding agreement. However, throughout the course of this, almost 30 year history now of this agreement being renewed, Congress is almost always sent the funds to Israel. So essentially, it exists to ensure that Israel maintains a quantitative military edge and gets the weapons that it needs in a timely fashion. - Okay, good background. Now, when the US and Israel negotiated their first MOU and these last for a decade, they negotiated this back in 1998. They signed it in 1999. They agreed to gradually eliminate American economic assistance to Israel, but it actually hasn't really happened that way. But why do they make that decision and what can we learn about that today? - So the Israeli negotiator for that first MOU, who you may have heard of, who's Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister at the time, acknowledged or long with American affiliate, the Clinton administration, that Israel's economy had become too mature to continue receiving, I think it was 1.2 billion a year in just straight up economic aid, right? To protect the Israeli economy, essentially like the US subsidizing beef and Argentina to help crop up there. That that was the sort of aid they were getting. They were also receiving 1.8 billion in military aid. So what happened, what ended up happening was is the overall number didn't change, even though the economic aid was phased out by 2007. But it was sort of, they described it as a glide path, where basically over the course of this 10-year agreement, the US would draw down the economic aid that it was giving to Israel while increasing the military aid. And there are a couple of reasons for that. The first is that Israel didn't really need the economic aid anymore. But the second was that by increasing the military side of the package, America actually got strategic advantage at it, instead of a much looser set of American interests surrounding just straight up economic aid to Israel. - And okay, let's just, I wanna make sure that we have the timeline here, right? We have one in 1999, and then we have another one signed that came during the Bush administration, right? And that was actually negotiated by FDD's own Jacob Nagel, former national security advisor. But talk to me about the money as it has grown and kind of what's been baked into these agreements. - So there's always been a level of military assistance. What Ufa, when people have heard him, and as I'm sure many of our listeners have about American aid to Israel, what they're talking about, foreign military financing, which is essentially America will subsidize Israeli defense purchases more increasingly more actually through the structure of this current MOU has to be spent in America. So they're essentially subsidizing Lockheed Martin and North of Permanent, right, but saying that Israel is going to be the one to buy this. Now that relationship has also changed within this current MOU. There are a couple of things. One, the amount of money that Israel is allowed of this money that Israel is allowed to spend outside of America, right, including it within Israel's own industrial base and in Germany, which is one of the largest defense relationships Israel has. That number has been baked into decrease close to zero. I think it's at a 260 million as of this fiscal year. That number will decrease to zero to ensure that all of the money is going into American defense. Also, a recent development is the number for the total number of FMF aid was originally 3.8 billion when the CEO was first signed. That has been drawn down to 3.3 billion, but replaced by what we will talk about should be the next core philosophy of the future MOU, but joint production of missile defense. So $500 million for US and Israel to spend together to collaborate on creating more I&M batteries to have Raytheon builds to mere interceptors in Arkansas. Initiatives like that where the US and Israel can work together on a project that serves them both. But we're still talking about 3.8 billion. It's just how you do the math. It's been creative, I guess, but it's addition, subtraction, addition. That's what we're talking about here. But 3.8 billion is what the Israelis have come to rely upon. Then there is, well, what happened when the war began, right? We saw a spike in 2024. So just briefly, let's talk about that because it was not part of the MOU, but the Israelis got more help from us, right? Absolutely. Israel, of course, was fighting a 7 front war by itself against, you know, increasingly capable enemies. So this is, this really goes to the MOU is just a outline. It's meant to serve as a sort of baseline. It doesn't actually like if Israel really needs search capacity and it needs missile interceptors and it needs refueling tankers in the air today, then the US can still do that. It's not limited in what it can or can't do within the US-Israeli relationship just based on the MOU saying this year, this is, you know, Israel is going to get a 3.8 billion for a military finance date. All right. And last question, I know we're getting into the weeds here, but I think it's important to get into the weeds. Israel's actually borrowing against future FMF, the foreign military financing, right? They've already done this. Just tell us about what that loan or that mortgage or that borrowing into the future looks like. So Israel's current procurement strategy has earmarked about $20 billion worth of FMF through the next 10 years while starting in 2028. That essentially means that Israel has said we are going to be buying a certain number of F-35s, F-15s, other technologies, many of which come from America. And the way that we're going to be able to finance this is by an assumption that the military aid relationship will continue. There are a couple of downsides, if many downsides actually, if this aid relationship is not at least slowly and deliberately drawn down off of a glide path. One of them is that Israel, which is already spending about 7% of its GDP on military spending, which is just an astronomical number. I think Ukraine and Algeria are the only two countries that spend more at the current moment. So 3.8 billion, not a lot to the US, the Pentagon would call that dust because they hardly noticed it's there. But for Israel, which has a 49 billion defense budget, it actually could increase spending by GDP to like 7.5. And even though Israel is committed to doing this because they're fighting a multi-frugged war still, which looks like it will continue into the future at least foreseeably. They need this stuff. So they're either going to have to pay for it or not pay for it. And that America loses the benefits that a strong Israeli military offers it in the Middle East, as it also stares down the barrel of renewed conflict. All right. All right, moving on then, the current MOU expires in two years. Both countries are increasingly discussing Israel's long-term independence from American military assistance. So I mean, you talked about that glide path. What would you say the objective of the next MOU? What should it be? So I think it should resemble the philosophy of the first MOU and the reasons behind it are different. Israel still needs American military aid and needs some level of financing to just by parts that it really can't afford to buy at this current moment and definitely cannot afford to try to produce and probably fail to produce. So the way forward here is joint development. Israel has a number of advantages in this area over even the U.S. One is the speed at which Israel can take an idea and turn it into a platform to sell. This is what happened with Iron Dome. That was an originally and is Israel only initiative that the U.S. like passed on when Israel said, "Do you want to collaborate on this?" Because they thought it was science fiction. Then Israel actually invented it and in 2014 the U.S. said, "Okay, we're going to make this a joint project now." And Arrow III and David Sling because Israel shared this proof of concept are real. The modern example would be the Oratan laser system which is incredibly futuristic. This was a co-production as well between Raphael and I believe Lucky Martin. But this is like a totally new technology that Israel was able to field the first fully mature version of. It's already within Israel's missile and drone defense layers. Usually when there's a joint defense there will be an American version of the product. But as Trump talks about a Golden Dome, a lot of that is going to be Israeli technology and Israeli research and R&D that's going into defending America. So there are a lot of other points of collaboration that we can discuss as well. But something where Israel and the U.S. work together to make technologies that benefit both of their countries. Right. Okay. So joint tech, and we have something by the way that FTD's Brad Bowman has worked on. This is the operations technology working group mandated by Congress. And it's already happening on a lot of levels I think as you suggest here. But the idea would be to formalize it even further and make it part of the, well, or maybe it replaces the MOU, but it is sort of mandated collaboration and cooperation on defense tech. So okay. Critics often characterize U.S. military assistance, assistance to Israel as a one-sided arrangement. I mean, let's just say we've all seen this ridiculous ad in Michigan where, you know, we've got two idiots in a supermarket or talking about how the price of eggs is seven dollars. And well, that is somehow connected back to the money that the United States has given Israel in order to buy weapons here at home to support our defense industry. But, you know, eggs. I mean, let's talk about the insanity of this for a minute, right? I mean, the U.S. gets quite a bit out of this relationship. Yes, the Israelis get a lot, but the U.S. gets quite a bit too, right? Yeah. It's definitely Israel benefits from getting a sizable percentage of their military spending subsidized to spend in America. But America gets a ton too. And it's not just the collaborations I've talked about and they're way more. I mean, the Marine Corps just integrated to mere interceptors into their medium-range intercept capability. So literally, it's really technology. I don't know if they actually love it. You know, it's what we call NIH, not invented here. I don't know if I would cite that one, but yes, I hear you like, increasingly, they should be, right? Anyway, continue. Yeah, or the American version. They're building two mirrors in Arkansas. But regardless, a strong Israeli military, which by the way, is law in the U.S. that Israel must have a qualitative military edge over there. I mean, there's a reason that that law exists, and it's not, you know, for optics, right? It's because Israel has acted as the advanced guard of American military action. And you can see that so clearly with Iran. When before midnight hammer, even before that, yeah, that single operation, Israel cleared the skies of basically all respectable Iranian and probably Russian-made air defenses that could have shot down American troops. They offered intelligence when one, you know, they got the Iranians got lucky and shot down in F-15. Israeli intelligence was used to help track down that pilot and rescue him from Iran. Not only that, but especially as Americans are increasingly growing wary of foreign wars and, you know, some would say China only. But there's a prevailing sense that the U.S. has done too much in the Middle East. If that happens, the best way for the U.S. to safeguard, it's really many interests there. And I think, you know, the Shrediform News Closure just shows how [BLANK_AUDIO] port and this region still is and how America can't just abandon it, but if the political wins for some level of retreat, then Israel will be the country that the only country really that we can rely on to advance our interests in the Middle East, whether that's bombing the Houthis or something else. Okay. So, I mean, I think all well put, and I think we now understand that the MOU has benefited Israel, yes, but it's also subsidized the military and it's given us a bunch of things and new technology and intelligence and war fighting capabilities when we don't want to have boots on the ground and all the things that you've said. And yet, there is something that is happening here in this country. And we see it on the left, the woke left, the squad type folks. You see it on the right from the Turkey-Katarles in wing of the Republican Party, if I may. We're seeing an effort right now to end this whole thing. And by the way, it's resonating in Israel, right? So like, what's going on here? So there are a couple of things going on and I want to compare it to that original MOU, that Clinton and Barack signed and be being negotiated. When they agree, when the American Israel agreed then to end economic assistance, Israel enjoyed about a 60, 40 approval rating in the U.S. it was popular. That was very much a mutual decision that both countries agreed, like things have changed when the facts change, my MOU changes. Right, well, what else would you do? But now, Israel's facing the reversal of those numbers almost, where it's like a 40/60 issue, that's politically difficult for anybody to stand up to. Trump has done a good job of doing so because I think for anybody, he doesn't care about low approval ratings, at least in politics, so that's kind of his superpower in preserving the strategically important relationship. But the political wins in America, because of pressure, really, that has completely taken over the Democratic Party and is pushing parts of the right towards this sort of shared or horseshoe theory agreement that we need to end economic aid to Israel. As you know, we are hearing that the next MOU will 100% cut down aid. We're probably half, right, so we're going to go from 3.8 to 1.9 or so, and that would be probably a positive, right, that would be a win for Israel if it only gets half, right? Especially when BB said that we should just end it all, right, get rid of it. And I read that as a saving face move. Maybe he's thinking he can win back one or two positive PR points. I don't think the average anti-Israel American will ever hear something that BB says about this or care. But I got to say, this is like trying to break up with someone before they break up with you, even if you don't want to break up with them, that's kind of what this is. I mean, this is like high school here, right? This is not what we talk about the strategic interests of Israel. It's not smart, right? I mean, the Israelis need this help. And I mean, as I argued with Michael Orrin, you're in the middle of a war. Do you want to start cutting down right now while you're in the middle of a war where things could get worse before they get better, right? Most definitely. I agree with your read, I think it's a purely a pride move. This is an example of even though Israel is a liberal democracy, it's also an Arab country and you would expect something out of this from Pakistan, but not from Israel. It's not a smart move, even if you can save a little bit of face. Okay. All right. Good background here. I mean, I think let me try to round third here. I know baseball season's over, but still on my mind. Where do we go from here? Right? I mean, if everybody agrees that Israel needs to become less dependent on American military systems. And by the way, the Israelis have a good case for wanting to do that because of your recall that the Biden administration withheld some of these J-dams, these 2,000 pound bombs in the middle of the war, right? In 2004, I guess it was, they're withholding weapons to Israel while they're fighting this existential battle on seven fronts. That was kind of a moment where the Israelis said, okay, maybe it's time to, you know, like loosen the reins a little bit. I'm, by the way, I'm not sure that the reins get loosened anyway, and you and I have talked about this, that the pressure could still be there without the money. So that just sounds like maybe a loss for Israel, but I mean, what are we, what are we trying to do here? If you would try to, you know, kind of sum things up, what should the relationship look like in another, I don't know, 10 years time? I think to sum it up briefly, it should be a burden cherry reciprocal relationship. And what that looks like in practice is that Israel and the US are involved in a number of incredibly important joint development projects where Israeli R&D and speed of development, you know, some people in America say that Israel is just America's R&D lab in the Middle East. That's the kind of relationship that I think would be positive for both countries. It would be much easier to see the benefits that the military relationship between the US and Israel has yielded if you have versions of Israeli technology defending American interests in Taiwan or in American bases. I mean, they've already gone to American bases in the Middle East, like in the UAE to defend those areas from missile attack, but that could become hopefully the defining narrative of US military, US Israel military cooperation. But that only happens if it go, if it doesn't happen overnight, it has to be a slow process over the course of maybe even more than 10 years, just for Israel to be able to focus on this sort of thing instead of diverting all of its resources away from R&D and into making up for the loss and procurement that it no longer has because it doesn't receive FMF but still needs the platforms that America sells it. All right, complicated stuff, and I gotta say, probably made more complicated by the cognitive warfare that's being waged against Americans, right? You get a sense that there's a lot of messaging that is coming at us on social media and AI and in our mainstream media, I mean, it is, it's a constant barrage of these messages and that ad in Michigan is just one of them, right? It's probably the most prominent example, but we're just inundated daily with Israel's not a good ally, Israel's, you know, like you hear the allegations, these insane allegations of genocide and famine and everything else, and what that's doing is I think eroding that sense of the need to support Israel, that sense of how this benefits all sides, and so this is all being negotiated, rather under pressure right now in the middle of a war and in the middle of a cognitive war that's being waged against us. Not easy stuff to navigate, but I think Samuel, you've helped make sense of it as much as we can make sense of it. I want to thank you for joining us today on the FDD Morning Brief. Thanks for having me. All right, good stuff, scary stuff, just crazy stuff, but you know, apart from the course for the last three years. Another episode, another week, another month in the books, Happy Halloween people. While you're stuffing your face with candy and rotting your teeth, I humbly suggest visiting our website at FDD.org. I also suggest checking out FDD's socials if you decide to doom-scrull this weekend. Oh, and don't forget, you can always make that highly appreciated tax deductible donation. You have been thinking about at FDD.org/invest, there's no time like the present to support how it works. We're steering into those US elections now, folks, and maybe a return to war should be a wild week. So tune in, would you? Until then, I'm Jonathan Chansor, as always, signing off for FDD. [Music]