Report: Trump Transferring $3B Worth of Bombs to Israel, Funded by US Taxpayers

The Trump administration is preparing to send a U.S. taxpayer-funded, $3 billion package of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, the biggest transfer of such weapons in recent years despite the administration’s supposed commitment to maintaining ceasefire agreements across several of Israel’s war fronts.

The package includes 60,000 bombs, split between MK-84s, BLU-117s, and I-2000 “bunker buster” weapons. The transfer is being done through the Foreign Military Financing mechanism, in which the U.S. gives Israel the money to buy the weapons.

The Washington Post reported on the package on Tuesday, citing a U.S. official, and said that Congress has been “informally notified” of it.

The Biden administration halted a single transfer of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel at the height of the genocide in Gaza in 2024, after sending the military thousands of them prior to the pause. President Donald Trump lifted that pause as one of his first acts in office in 2025 — despite warnings that Israel’s frequent use of the bombs in civilian areas amounts to war crimes, and that sending them without conditions could amount to a violation of international and domestic law.

These weapons are extremely destructive. Used extensively by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, these bombs are capable of creating massive craters on impact and sending shrapnel flying in every direction.

Even smaller bombs have been known to rip bodies apart to tiny shreds when dropped on a population, as Israel has done repeatedly to civilians in its genocide in Gaza, as well as its bombardments of Lebanon and Iran. For instance, researchers found in 2024 that, in the first six weeks of Israel’s genocide in Gaza alone, the military dropped about 600 2,000-pound bombs in the vicinity of hospitals.

Amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Israel reportedly dropped an MK-84 on a densely-populated area of Tehran, killing dozens of civilians; the U.S. also reportedly used the same bomb in an overnight strike on a family home in Iran in July, killing a husband, wife, and their 2-year-old son.

The transfer comes as U.S. officials are claiming that they’re trying to pressure Israel to slow or stop its fighting across multiple fronts. Israel has largely backed out of war on Iran — which the Trump administration dubiously says transformed into a “military conflict” and not a war after the April ceasefire. Trump administration figures have expressed supposed frustration with Israel for repeated violations of U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreements in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

Sending a tranche of the much-criticized, highly destructive bombs to the country, however, sends the opposite message. The Trump administration also drew scrutiny when it bypassed Congress to send $4 billion in military assistance to Israel last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is adding to the amount of firepower in the Middle East elsewhere, potentially accelerating the destabilization and violence that has been sparked during the Iran war. The State Department notified Congress of a sale of $5 billion of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Saudi Arabia last week, as the country was entangled in escalating violence against Yemen’s Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah.

In recent days, the Houthis have seized the country’s Red Sea coastline, while a key Saudi pipeline was struck, sending oil prices soaring. Saudi Arabia has cut oil shipments to Europe as a result of the damage to the pipeline, per Reuters.

The Saudis, who are backing the Yemeni armed forces, have conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Yemen in recent days. The U.S. has sent over 100 military advisers on the ground in Saudi Arabia to support the country in its strikes on Yemen.