US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Washington is considering selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates despite that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed concerns over the issue.
Two days earlier, Netanyahu detailed multiple occasions on which he told US officials he opposes such a sale. he denied reports that the deal is part of the normalization agreement between the Zionist entity and the UAE, and a White House source confirmed that it is not in the peace deal.
However, Abu Dhabi has made it clear, for the past six years and in the days after official ties with Tel Aviv were announced, that they are interested in buying the planes. Trump acknowledged this, saying the UAE would like “quite a few F-35s.”
“It’s the greatest fighter jet in the world,” Trump said on Wednesday night. “They’d like to buy F-35s, we’ll see what happens. It’s under review.”
Trump also showed his positive view on Abu Dhabi: “They’ve definitely got the money to pay for it. It’s nice because a lot of times when we make deals, they don’t have 10 cents, these countries we deal with. We give to them, [saying] ‘How about paying this back later?’ But they never pay because they don’t have the money.”
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration accelerated the process towards selling the jets, as well as advanced drones, to the UAE, and that the White House denied that it is directly tied to normalization with the Zionist entity.
White House Special Advisor Jared Kushner is reportedly involved in the push for an arms deal.
Source: Israeli media
