Biden ‘considering more than $1B in new weapons deals for Israel’

The Biden administration is weighing the introduction of a new weapons deal that would see more than $1 billion worth of arms being sold to Israel, according to a new report. The Wall Street Journal’s report was published just hours after the Jewish state retaliated against Iran’s recent drone attack with a series of overnight strikes.

The new deal is in addition to an aid deal that includes $26 billion for Israel currently being debated by Congress, The Wall Street Journal reports. The deal includes tank ammunition, worth $700 million, military vehicles worth $500 million, and mortar rounds worth $100 million, bringing the total to $1.3 billion. It would be the largest single military deal the U.S. has done with Israel since Hamas’ brutal assault on October 7 that killed 1,200 people.

The sale will require signoff from congressional leaders and will be delivered over a long period of time that could stretch into years. On Thursday, both sides of the aisle were toiling in order to approve a $95 billion package of foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as several other national security policies at a critical moment at home and abroad. 

Former state department official Brian Finucane called the reported new deal ‘signal of unconditional military support,’ when speaking to the Journal. ‘The U.S. has yet to use the leverage it has with arms transfers to shape Israeli behavior,’ he noted. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson this week set in motion a plan to advance the package, which has been held up since October by GOP lawmakers resistant to approving more funding for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

As the Republican speaker faced an outright rebellion from his right flank and growing threats for his ouster, it became clear that House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries would have to lend to help to Johnson every step of the way. ‘This is a very important message we are going to send to the world this week, and I’m anxious to get it done,’ Johnson said earlier Wednesday announcing his strategy.

President Joe Biden openly endorsed the package. ‘The House must pass the package this week, and the Senate should quickly follow,’ Biden said. ‘I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t let Iran or Russia succeed.’ The growing momentum for a bipartisanship dynamic, a rarity in the deeply divided Congress, brought rare scenes of Republicans and Democrats working together to assert U.S. standing on the global stage and help American allies. But it also sent Johnson’s House Republican majority into fresh rounds of chaos.

Johnson’s Republican leadership team, seizing on the opportunity to outflank hardline conservatives with Democratic support, raised the idea of quickly changing the procedural rules to make it harder to oust the speaker from office. But ultra-conservatives reacted with fury, angrily confronting Johnson on the House floor in a tense scene on Thursday morning. Several suggested they would join the effort to oust Johnson if the rule was changed. By the afternoon, Johnson backed away from the idea. ‘We will continue to govern under the existing rules,’ the speaker said on the social platform X.

Meanwhile, a rare image of bipartisan statesmanship was on display as the procedural Rules committee began debate launching the steps needed to push the foreign aid package forward toward weekend voting. The Republican chairmen of the powerful Appropriations and Foreign Affairs committees alongside their top Democratic counterparts spoke in evocative language, some drawing on World War II history, to make the case for ensuring the U.S. stand with its allies against aggressors.

Chairman Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee cast this as a ‘pivotal’ time in world history, comparing the current images of people fleeing the conflict in Europe to the situation in 1939 as Hitler’s Germany rose to power. ‘Time is not on our side,’ he told the panel. The top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, shared McCaul’s urgency: ‘The camera of history is rolling.’

Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.