Israel has signaled its opposition to a proposed U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, Israel’s Kan News broadcaster reported Saturday.
Outgoing Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer reportedly raised the Jewish state’s concerns regarding the sale of 48 jets to Riyadh during a final meeting he held with senior officials in Washington last week.
According to Kan News, Jerusalem fears that the sale of the jets will lead to information leaks to Russia and China, allies of Saudi Arabia, and to the loss of the Israel Defense Forces’ qualitative military edge in the region.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he was considering agreeing to supply Saudi Arabia with the state-of-the-art stealth jets.
“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.”
News of the potential sale comes as Trump plans to host Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington on Tuesday. The two leaders are expected to sign economic and defense agreements.
Asked about the meeting on Friday, Trump told reporters that it was “more than meeting, we’re honoring” the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
He reiterated his hope Saudi Arabia would soon join the Abraham Accords, which have normalized relations between Israel and several Arab and Muslim nations since 2020. Riyadh has so far opposed such normalization, citing a lack of agreement on a roadmap to Palestinian statehood.
Two Israeli officials told Axios on Saturday that Jerusalem was urging the Trump administration to condition an F-35 sale on Saudi Arabia formally normalizing its diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
One of the officials said that the U.S. giving Saudi Arabia F-35s without getting any diplomatic deliverables in return would be “a mistake and counterproductive.”
“Unlike the supply of F-35s to Turkey that we strongly oppose, we are less concerned about such weapons system in Saudi Arabia if it’s part of a regional security cooperation as part of the Abraham Accords, like we have with the United Arab Emirates,” the other Israeli official told Axios.
The Israeli officials said they also hoped Trump would press Mohammed bin Salman to soften his demands, and that the meeting would launch direct talks between the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a potential peace agreement that could materialize in the coming months.
Currently, the Israel Defense Forces is the only military in the Middle East that has the F-35. While Israel agreed to the United States selling 50 F-35s to the UAE, subject to several security guarantees, the agreement never actualized due to the Biden administration’s demand to restrict the use of the jets.
