War on Iran: US’s history of making other nations pay for conflicts 

United States President Donald Trump is considering asking Arab countries to cover the cost of the US-Israel war on Iran, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said.

“I think it’s something the president would be quite interested in calling them to do,” Leavitt told reporters at a news briefing on Monday.

“I won’t get ahead of him on that, but certainly, it’s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you’ll hear more from him on.”

Such a mechanism would be similar to how US allies helped fund Washington’s intervention during the Gulf War in 1990.

On Monday, Trump also indicated that he may be satisfied with bringing the war to a close even without the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that “other partners” who rely more heavily on exports shipped through the narrow waterway, which Iran closed shortly after the war began at the end of February, should take on the burden of managing that crisis.

In peacetime, about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies are shipped through the strait. This has forced the price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, as high as $116 per barrel this week, compared with a pre-war price of about $65 and has sparked major supply concerns across the globe. The US, however, is largely self-sufficient when it comes to these resources.

For its part, Tehran has stated that the US should pay reparations to compensate victims of the war in Iran as a condition for any ceasefire to take effect.

So far, there has been no indication from Middle Eastern governments – particularly members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which have themselves been directly affected by Iranian strikes on US military assets and infrastructure in their territories – about whether they are prepared to help fund the war. The overall cost, which could run to tens of billions of dollars, analysts said, is still unclear.

Unlike in the 1990-1991 Gulf War, GCC and other Arab states did not ask the US to intervene in Iran before strikes began on February 28, experts pointed out.

“This would have made sense if it was those GCC states that advocated for this war to happen, but they actually advocated for the war not to happen in the lead-up to the war. They continue to call for diplomacy and de-escalation,” Zeidon Alkinani, founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“The country that seems to be worthy to take and handle the costs would be Israel. The Israeli government … is the party and the agency that has convinced and pushed the United States to take this war on,” Alkinani added.

If the US were to press Arab countries to fund the war on Iran, it would not be the first time the US has tried to – often successfully – make other nations pay for wars it has started or been heavily involved in.

Gulf War

In August 1990, then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, accusing it of overproducing oil to drive down prices and harming its northern neighbour’s war-battered economy after its protracted conflict with Iran for much of the 1980s.

Iraq also revived a longstanding territorial claim over Kuwait dating back to Ottoman- and British-era borders to justify its invasion.

The Iraqi army rapidly overran Kuwait, occupying its capital within days and forcing the 13th emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, to flee to Saudi Arabia, where he led the government in exile while Iraqi forces controlled the country.

In January 1991, the US led a global coalition of several dozen countries, including Western, Arab and other Muslim-majority states, to force out Iraqi forces at the request of Kuwait and several of its Gulf neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia. The invasion was named Operation Desert Storm.

The conflict lasted just over six weeks with its main combat phase running from mid‑January to the end of February 1991. The war cost the coalition $61bn at the time, worth about $140bn today.

The war was mostly funded as it progressed by a group of nations comprising Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany and Japan. Together, they provided $54bn, about 88 percent of the cost of the war.

Most of those contributions were footed by Saudi Arabia, which paid $16.8bn at the time, covering 27 percent of the war costs, and Kuwait, which provided $16bn, or 26 percent of the war costs.

Japan contributed $10bn (16 percent), Germany spent $6.4bn (10 percent), the UAE provided $4bn (6.5 percent) and South Korea chipped in $251m (0.5 percent).

The US covered 12 percent of the costs of the war – $7.3bn, according to figures published by the Pentagon in the early 1990s.

Post-World War II

World War II officially began when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 amid Nazi expansionism.

As a result, Britain and France declared war on Germany a couple of days later.

Japan had already been at war in China since 1937, and in 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This pulled the US into the war.

The war ended in 1945: Soviet troops took Berlin, and Germany surrendered; weeks later, the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, which too then surrendered.

From 1948 to 1951, the US implemented the Marshall Plan, a US aid plan for Europe’s recovery from the devastation of the war. The US provided more than $13bn in economic support to rebuild Western European economies and contain Soviet influence.

But war reparations were also paid by Japan and Germany, who were forced to accept occupation.

Japan paid more than $1bn from the 1950s to the 1970s to several Asian countries through a patchwork of bilateral treaties and “economic cooperation” agreements.

Germany paid tens of billions of dollars of reparations and compensation. However, there is no single, universally agreed total figure.

While Japanese and German reparations did not go to the US, both countries have spent billions of dollars on the upkeep of US military bases on their territories since World War II. Japan spends about $1.4bn a year, and Germany in excess of $1bn annually, on these bases.

Ukraine war

Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine began in February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

While it was not an instigator of this conflict, the US was at first a key ally of Ukraine, providing Kyiv with military support to counter Russian attacks.

Indeed, the US committed the largest amount of aid to Ukraine – 114.64 billion euros ($134bn) – from January 24, 2022, to June 30, 2025.

This included 64.6 billion euros ($75bn) in military aid, 46.6 billion euros ($54bn) in financial aid and 3.4 billion euros ($4bn) in humanitarian aid.

The European Union has been the second biggest donor at 63.19 billion euros ($74bn), followed by Germany (21.29 billion euros or $25bn), the United Kingdom (18.6 billion euros or $21bn) and Japan (13.57 billion euros or $15bn).

At the same time, Washington has urged European allies to supply weapons to Ukraine and ramp up their own defence spending, helping drive US foreign arms sales to a record $318.7bn in 2024.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has withdrawn 99 percent of US support, shifting the financial burden to European nations instead.

Rather than provide aid, Washington is now selling weapons to Ukraine’s European allies. In July, for example, the US and Germany struck a deal through which Germany will buy US-made air defence systems, such as Patriot systems, to make them available to Ukraine.

That same month, Trump announced he had approved $10bn in sales of weapons for Ukraine to be paid for by Ukraine’s European allies.

He told reporters that after spending billions to help Ukraine since 2022, “we’re getting our money back in full.”

The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker shows that support to Ukraine has remained stable since the withdrawal of nearly all US funding because Europe has ramped up its support by about two-thirds.

In 2025, Europe contributed about $70bn in military and financial aid to Ukraine while the US contribution fell to $400m.