A shipment of 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs arrived in Israel on Feb. 16, several weeks after President Donald Trump announced the end of a months-long freeze of critical US weapons deliveries to Israel. But there are still more weapons that Israel needs stuck in US bureaucratic processes.
To fulfill his promise that these weapons “are now on their way,” Trump should use his emergency authority to push past remaining roadblocks.
Despite Trump removing the Biden administration’s ban on delivering MK-84 bombs, numerous other transfers remain stuck, including MK-83 1,000-pound bombs, MK-82 500-pound bombs, Hellfire missiles, and tank and mortar shells. JINSA’s Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal revealed in November that the Biden administration had been slow walking these weapons, as well as armored bulldozers that the Trump administration has now started to deliver.
Such hindrances in arms deliveries, whatever their cause, only increase risk to Israel, the Middle East, and the United States. Now, with Iran accelerating its nuclear program and its proxies threatening to abandon the fragile ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, Tehran could see any further delays as opportunities to exploit. Conversely, rapidly arming Israel, by both providing vital capabilities and signaling US commitment, is critical to deterring and defeating Iran-backed aggression.
Yet, beyond delays within the Biden administration, Congress has also put up roadblocks.
In January, President Joe Biden alerted Congress that he planned to send $8 billion of weapons to Israel, including Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) Guidance Kits, 500-pound bombs, AMRAAM and Hellfire missiles, and 155mm artillery rounds. However, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, put a hold on packages. His hold could have held up the weapons indefinitely because of the specific process the Biden administration used to notify Congress about the sale.
The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires the State Department to publicly notify the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee before selling weapons to a foreign partner, at least 30 days for most countries or 15 days for close partners like Israel. But there is also another, informal process known as “tiered review” that the State Department has been using since 2012.
Under tiered review, State alerts the relevant committees that it plans to submit formal notification of a weapons sale within 40 days. It then waits to receive approval from all four of the committee leaders before actually making the notification. By withholding his approval, Meeks effectively put a hold on Biden’s January arm package, just as he had with other, similar shipments, some dating back to October of last year. While there is no legal requirement to honor such holds, the State Department usually does and did so in this case.
To rectify this situation, the Trump administration notified Congress on February 7 that it will skip tiered review for new packages — avoiding any further holds — that advance $8.4 billion of weapons for Israel to formal review, starting the clock for Congress to take action.
As part of the overall sale, the State Department approved a $6.75 billion foreign military sale (FMS) deal for thousands of SDBs, MK-82s, JDAMs, and fuzes. A separate FMS covers an estimated $660 million of Hellfire Missiles. In addition, the Pentagon announced a direct commercial sale of artillery shells.
If legislators want to prevent these sales, they will have to pass a resolution blocking them. No such efforts have ever succeeded. A resolution from Rep. Meeks in January 2021 sought to block the transfer of SDBs to Saudi Arabia, and the Senate overwhelmingly rejected resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in November 2024 that tried to block selling tank and mortar rounds and JDAM kits to Israel.
There is an even faster way to move weapons to countries that urgently need them, as Israel currently does. The AECA also allows the president to waive the notification period if he verifies that “an emergency exists,” allowing the immediate delivery of the weapons.
Republican and Democratic presidents, including Trump, have used this authority. In May 2019, the Trump administration invoked the waiver to push through 22 pending arms transfers to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Biden administration used waivers to send weapons quickly to Ukraine in April 2022, in April and May 2024, and to sell Israel artillery rounds and other equipment in December 2023.
Israel is still waiting on multiple weapons, not just 2,000-pound bombs, delayed by the Biden administration. Trump should force his State and Defense departments to advance any remaining stuck items and submit an emergency waiver to immediately deliver backlogged weapons to Israel.
After months of delays, the United States should provide Israel with the weapons it needs as soon as possible.
Blaise Misztal and Ari Cicurel are the vice president for policy and associate director of foreign policy, respectively, at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
Originally published in Breaking Defense.