President Donald Trump said that countries the United States protected during the Iran war will have to repay Washington for its costs, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday.
“Those countries that we’ve protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war,” Trump said. “We’re gonna get all that money back.”
Trump did not name the countries. Newsweek reported that he appeared to be referring to the Middle Eastern states that Iran targeted during the war, which include Israel and several Gulf states.
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump said that “Israel would not exist except for Donald Trump,” crediting the US B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “We decapitated their nuclear arsenal,” he said.
Asked about the Republican losses in last week’s midterm elections, Trump largely agreed that the war and rising gas prices had contributed, and noted what he called “a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel” among the public.
The Pentagon has estimated the war’s cost to US taxpayers at $47 billion. The Congressional Budget Office put it at about $38 billion from February through the start of August, including more than $13 billion spent on air defense interceptors. It remains unclear how any costs could be divided among individual countries.
