Trump says Israel, Gulf allies must repay Iran war cost: What does it mean?

United States President Donald Trump has said the US plans to seek compensation from countries it “protected” during its war on Iran. In an interview with CBS News correspondent Ross Douthat that aired Sunday, Trump said such countries would “pay us any and all costs we had for the war”. “We’re going to get all that money back,” Trump said.

“They’re going to do it, 100 percent. Because without us, they wouldn’t exist.” For the first time, Trump also explicitly spoke of compensation from Israel, which he said “wouldn’t exist” without US military intervention. The reimbursement demand comes after Trump and his Republican party took a drubbing in midterm elections, which the president has conceded was partly due to public discontent over the Iran war.

The US president has since declared the war “effectively over” militarily , while defending his decision to start the conflict as “a very good decision”. Trump — for the first time — singled out Israel, which was a direct participant in the war against Iran from the outset. “We decapitated their [Iran’s] nuclear arsenal,” he said.