Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told JNS on Monday that the Jewish state “must maintain” aerial superiority in the region, commenting on the possible U.S. sale of F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia.
“We are in the Middle East—we cannot get confused. We extend a hand to anyone who truly wants to extend a hand and not harm the State of Israel, but we must preserve our superiority,” Ben-Gvir told JNS.
Jerusalem has reportedly signaled its opposition to the proposed sale of 48 fighter jets to Riyadh. Outgoing Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer raised concerns regarding the sale during a meeting with top officials in Washington last week, Kan News reported on Saturday.
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he was considering supplying Saudi Arabia with the state-of-the-art stealth warplanes.
“They wanna buy a lot of jets,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “I’m looking at that. They’ve asked me to look at it. They want to buy a lot of ’35,’ but they want to buy actually more than that, fighter jets.”
According to Kan News, Jerusalem fears that the sale will lead to information leaks to Russia and China, allies of Saudi Arabia, and to the possible loss of the Israel Defense Forces’ qualitative military edge.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism Party) told JNS on Monday that he was “confident, with God’s help, that Israel’s security superiority will remain, in all aspects.”
“It’s a matter of national security and our dialogue with the Americans. How to maintain Israel’s advantage and security superiority; that’s what is being discussed behind closed doors,” Smotrich added.
Two Israeli officials told Axios on Saturday that Jerusalem had asked the Trump administration to condition any possible F-35 sale on Riyadh formally normalizing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Currently, the IDF is the only military in the Middle East that has the F-35. The United States previously mulled selling 50 F-35s to the United Arab Emirates, subject to several security guarantees, but the agreement never materialized due to the Biden administration’s demand to restrict the use of the jets.
