President Trump has released a hold on a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that was paused by the Biden administration, Axios reported on Saturday.
The report said the shipment of 1,800 MK-84 bombs, which are in storage in the US, will be shipped to Israel in the coming days. President Trump alluded to the shipment in a statement on Saturday, saying weapons Israel had “paid for” are on the way, although many, if not all, of recent US weapons shipments to Israel have likely been financed by US military aid.
“A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
On Sunday, Netanyahu released a statement thanking the president. “Thank you, President Trump, for keeping your promise to give Israel the tools it needs to defend itself, to confront our common enemies and to secure a future of peace and prosperity,” he said.
Also on Sunday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was sworn in on Saturday, spoke with Netanyahu in his first call with a foreign official and vowed the US would continue supporting Israel. According to a Pentagon readout of the call, the two discussed the “unbreakable bond that exists between the United States and Israel,” and Hegseth said the US would “ensure that Israel has the capabilities it needs to defend itself.”
Israel has frequently used 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas of Gaza, including tent camps, slaughtering many Palestinian women and children. The Israeli military also dropped the huge bombs on residential buildings in Lebanon.
Biden put a hold on a 2,000-pound bomb shipment and a 500-pound bomb shipment back in April as part of a public relations stunt to make it seem like he was putting pressure on Israel over its plans to invade the southern city of Rafah.
Israel ended up invading Rafah, capturing its border crossing with Egypt, and now the city lies in ruin. Other US weapons continued to flow to Israel, and the pause on the 500-pound bombs was lifted in July, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the pause on the 2,000-pound bombs to claim that Biden was restricting military aid.
