No, the US and Israel Did Not Go to War With Each Other: The Claim Is False
“The US and Israel began a war earlier this year”
The argument in brief
The claim that the United States and Israel began a war against each other is false. The two countries are close military allies, not adversaries. Every available official record — including U.S. Department of Defense files, Congressional Research Service reports through 2025, and War Powers Resolution notifications — shows no military hostilities between them at any point, while the US provides Israel $3.8 billion in annual military financing under a formal partnership agreement.
Why it spread
Multiple real military events were happening simultaneously in the Middle East — US strikes in Yemen, Israel's war in Gaza, regional escalations — and social media environments reward speed over accuracy. Audiences encountering rapid-fire headlines about American and Israeli military action, without clear context about who was fighting whom and where, were primed to merge those stories into a single false narrative. Deliberate bad actors can exploit exactly this kind of legitimate complexity to seed misinformation that feels grounded because parts of it are technically true.
The claim holds that the United States and Israel began a war against each other earlier this year. That is false. No such war exists, has been declared, or has been reported by any credible source. Every relevant official record points in the opposite direction: the two countries are among the closest military allies on earth.
The evidence is unambiguous. According to Congressional Research Service reports through 2025, the US provides Israel $3.8 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing under a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding — the kind of arrangement you build with a partner, not an enemy. The US State Department's own bilateral relations page describes the US-Israel relationship as one of America's strongest alliances, with no indication of armed conflict. The US Department of Defense has no record of any military action against Israel, and War Powers Resolution notifications to Congress — the legal mechanism the executive branch must use when committing US forces to hostilities — have never once named Israel as an adversary.
The strongest version of the claim rests on the genuine complexity of the Middle East in 2024 and 2025: the US has conducted military strikes in Yemen against Houthi forces under operations beginning in January 2024, and Israel has been engaged in an ongoing war in Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas attack. If you consume headlines quickly, these overlapping conflicts can blur together into a single chaotic picture. That confusion is understandable — but it does not survive scrutiny. As both the Department of Defense and major wire services including the Associated Press and Reuters make clear, these are entirely separate conflicts in which the US and Israel are on the same side, not opposing sides.
This is where the claim breaks down completely. It conflates distinct military actions — different countries, different theaters, different adversaries — and collapses them into a fabricated US-versus-Israel narrative. There is no cherry-picked statistic to correct here, no outdated data to update. The foundational premise is simply invented. No declaration of war, no War Powers notification, no DoD record, no credible news report supports it.
The manipulation pattern here is one to recognize and remember: take several real, complicated, simultaneous events; strip out the context that distinguishes them; and reassemble the pieces into a false story that feels plausible because the underlying ingredients are real. The Gaza war is real. US strikes in Yemen are real. US-Israel military cooperation is real. The war between the US and Israel is not. When a claim about geopolitics sounds dramatic and surprising, the first question to ask is whether someone has quietly swapped out who the adversaries actually are.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Defense
The U.S. and Israel are treaty-aligned partners; as of mid-2025 the U.S. has conducted military strikes in Yemen (against Houthi forces, Operation Prosperity Guardian / subsequent operations beginning January 2024) and provided military aid to Israel, but no declaration of war between the U.S. and Israel exists in any DoD record.
- U.S. Congress / War Powers Resolution records
No War Powers Act notification to Congress has ever cited Israel as an adversary. The U.S. and Israel are close military allies, not belligerents; the U.S. has never declared war on Israel.
- Congressional Research Service
CRS reports through 2025 consistently describe U.S.-Israel relations as a strategic partnership, including $3.8 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing under the 2016 MOU, with no record of armed conflict between the two states.
- Associated Press / Reuters newswires, 2024-2025
Major wire services covering the Middle East conflict (October 2023 Hamas attack, subsequent Gaza war, U.S. strikes on Houthis in Yemen) report no military hostilities between the United States and Israel at any point in 2024 or 2025.
- U.S. State Department
State Department bilateral relations page describes the U.S.-Israel relationship as one of the strongest U.S. alliances, with no indication of armed conflict between the two countries as of 2025.
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