Myths About Israel, Debunked: Why Iranian Democracy Is the Path to Peace
False narratives about Israel obscure the real engine of conflict: Iran’s regime, its proxy armies, and the democratic future for Iran that could bring peace to the Middle East.
Myth. Social media is all abuzz with the same recycled myth: Israel wants “Greater Israel,” Israel likes war, and if America simply cut off foreign aid to Israel, peace would magically break out across the Middle East within a month.
US aid is not the on/off switch for Israel’s defense. Israel’s broader wartime defense and security spending has been cited around $80 billion, while regular US military assistance to Israel is $3.8 billion a year.
Let’s talk about that aid. The United States is not simply handing Israel a bag of cash. The current US-Israel agreement provides $38 billion over ten years, or $3.8 billion per year, including Foreign Military Financing and cooperative missile-defense programs.
In other words, the aid works more like a credit account for American defense purchases. Israel uses it to buy American aircraft, munitions, missile-defense components, and other systems from American defense contractors. Israel also buys billions more beyond the aid package. In 2024, for example, the US approved a weapons package allowing Israel to spend more than $20 billion of Israel’s own funds on American defense equipment.
Israel spends considerably more money with American defense contractors than it receives in aid. Built into this partnership are military cooperation, technology sharing, research and development, and upgrades Israel makes to American equipment under real-world battlefield conditions. Some of that is public. Some of it is classified. But the result is clear: the United States receives enormous strategic, technological, and defense value from Israel, likely worth far more than the $3.8 billion a year in aid.
Israel is not a charity case. It is a prosperous country and one of America’s most important defense partners. Iron Dome is a perfect example. Israel developed and battle-tested a revolutionary defense system, and the United States has benefited from the technology, co-production, manufacturing, and battlefield lessons. Israel has also reportedly deployed Iron Dome and personnel to help defend Gulf allies against Iranian missiles and drones. The same is true with missile defense, cyber defense, drones, counter-drone systems, intelligence, battlefield medicine, and now laser defense technology.
I recently saw someone ask online, “Why shoot down a $20,000 drone with a multimillion-dollar missile?” Because that $20,000 drone could destroy targets worth tens of millions of dollars. That is part of America’s return on investment. Israel’s laser-defense systems are already beginning to shift the economics dramatically. Instead of relying only on expensive interceptors against every cheap drone or rocket, Israel is now using laser-defense technology that can destroy some threats for the cost of electricity. Thank Israel for that, and for many other battlefield-tested innovations America benefits from.
Cutting aid off for a month would not suddenly make Israel stop fighting. It would not make Israel defenseless, and it would not create peace. Israel is not fighting because it wants to bomb Lebanon. Israel is fighting because it is under attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Cutting aid would only embolden Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran to fight harder.
Israel wants peace. Here is the proof: Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979. Israel has not bombed Egypt since. Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994. Israel has not bombed Jordan since, or for many years before that. The peace treaty with Egypt is 47 years old. The peace treaty with Jordan is 32 years old. When countries make peace with Israel and stop attacking Israel, Israel makes peace and keeps peace.
The “Greater Israel” claim is a myth. Israel has no plan to expand its territory into neighboring countries. Israel has given back land for peace. The claim that Israel likes war is also a myth. The instigator of conflict across the region is the Islamic regime in Iran, which has built a terror network around Israel: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen at the choke point of the Red Sea.
The answer is not another deal with Iran that allows the Islamic regime to survive, regroup, and keep arming its proxies and terrorists worldwide. The answer is to tell the regime: leave Iran while you can, because America should accept nothing less.
America and Israel do not need boots on the ground in Iran. We do not need an occupying force. But we must support the Iranian people, provide weapons, air support, and strategic help to Iran’s democratic movement. There are roughly 90 million people living in Iran, and the vast majority do not want to be ruled by this regime. The Iranian people can remove the Islamic regime if the free world finally helps them.
Just look at the last 47 years of worldwide terror and jihadist expansion. Either we help end the Islamic regime’s control of Iran, or we face the next 50 years of the same nightmare.
That is how we move toward peace in the Middle East.
“Cut off aid to Israel for a month and there will be instant peace” is not a peace plan.
It is a slogan.
And a very ignorant one.
Please share a link to this blog anywhere you see these myths.
