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Source: https://sapirjournal.org/money/2025/the-calculable-costs-of-israels-wars/
The (Calculable) Costs of Israel's Wars
(Sapir) Jonathan Schanzer - It is likely that Israel spent more than $1 billion on Arrow-3 interceptions alone since the start of its multifront war. That estimate does not include the cost of shooting down dozens of cruise missiles, hundreds of drones, and thousands of rockets launched against Israel. Then there is the price of offensive operations, using thousands of precision, high-tech munitions fired at targets in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, at a cost running into the billions. Don't forget the price required to fuel Israel's fighter jets for thousands of sorties. Keeping troops in the field over hundreds of days of fighting, while maintaining, repairing, or replacing their equipment, adds additional billions. So do repeated military mobilizations, which remove tens of thousands of people from the civilian workforce. There is the cost to Israel of preparing for the next war. Israel has already decided it needs a far more independent defense-industrial base after the Biden administration decided to suspend deliveries of 2,000-pound bombs. The development of cutting-edge military technologies such as the Iron Beam laser involves additional costs. There's also the cost of the wars to the home front. The destruction wrought by Iranian ballistic missiles - especially in central Israel - will require massive reconstruction, including $1.5 billion in property compensation and over $300 million to rebuild a single tower in Tel Aviv. Multiple towers were destroyed. Rebuilding the kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope and northern communities such as Metula adds further billions. Earlier this year, the Bank of Israel estimated that the war's total cost through the end of 2025 could reach $68 billion. The writer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department, is executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.