According to its website, USAID supplied at least $641 million of the $1.2 billion in humanitarian aid America has provided to the Palestinians since October 7, 2023. In fact, the USAID inspector general led a delegation to Israel to oversee this aid on the week of January 20. The problem is that the agency usually works through local institutions, and in the Middle East and elsewhere these are not always so humanitarian as they seem.

An investigation by Gabby Deutch and Lahav Harkov gives a sense of both the good and the evil done by USAID. A few examples suffice:

One organization that received USAID funds directed $2 million to another group that arranged meetings between Palestinian teens and convicted terrorists. Another USAID grantee produced a documentary criticizing U.S. anti-BDS laws. . . . USAID has also provided funding to top Israeli medical institutions including Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Hadassah hospitals in Jerusalem.

In another investigation, based on conversations with several current and former officials, Adam Kredo takes a look at the destructive ways USAID has been spending its money. It seems that much of the agency’s corruption occurred during the recent directorship of the Israel-hating former UN ambassador Samantha Power:

In November 2022, for instance, USAID awarded $100,000 to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders hailed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group. Just six days before Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel, USAID handed $900,000 “to a terror charity in Gaza involved with the son of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.”

USAID’s hostilities toward the Jewish state, however, ran deeper than the agency’s grantmaking. Under Samantha Power, . . . agency officials fought pro-Israel policymaking at the State Department, often urging their colleagues at Foggy Bottom to pare down statements that praised the Jewish state, former officials said. In 2021, during a period of conflict with Hamas, Power herself refused to meet with Israel’s ambassador unless Israel reached a cease-fire with the Iran-backed terror group.

Nor are these problems restricted to Israel and Gaza. Isabel Vincent and Benjamin Weinthal report that “USAID humanitarian packages were found amid a cache of weapons owned by the terror group Hizballah in Lebanon.”

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.