U.S President Donald Trump said both Israel and Saudi Arabia are “great” allies, as he confirmed that the United States would sell Riyadh F-35 fighter jets that are “pretty similar” to those that Israel operates.
Trump made the comments during an Oval Office session with reporters on Tuesday alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump said Israel is aware of the arrangement, which he first announced in broader terms on Monday.
Israel would “like you to get planes of reduced caliber,” Trump told the Saudi prince, as reporters looked on. “I don’t think that makes you too happy.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line,” Trump said of Jerusalem and Riyadh. “We’re going to have a deal. They’re going to purchase F-35s.”
Trump would not confirm reports that Israel requested that he condition the F-35 sale to Riyadh on the kingdom normalizing diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.
All Trump would say about the emerging sale to Saudi Arabia is that “Israel is aware, and they’re going to be very happy.”
Details about the potential sale of the F-35s remain scarce. Israel is the only U.S. ally in the Middle East to have access to the advanced technology.
Bin Salman said on Tuesday that Riyadh will “definitely help” pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, though an exact figure has yet to be finalized.
Trump said, “It’ll be a lot.” He added that “the Palestinians are doing very well” and that “we’re working very closely with a lot of people that make everybody happy, including Israel, the Palestinians and everybody.”
Of a path to Saudi normalization with Israel, bin Salman said he and Trump had a “healthy discussion” on the subject and that Riyadh wants to join the Abraham Accords with “a clear path” toward a two-state solution.
“We’re going to work on that to be sure that we can prepare the right situation as soon as possible to have that,” bin Salman said.
Trump said he didn’t want to describe it as a “commitment, but we’ve had a very good talk on the Abraham Accords.”
“We talked about one state and two state,” Trump said, without explaining what he meant by “one state.”
The U.S. president added that he and the Saudi prince would discuss the topic further and that bin Salman has “a very good feeling toward the Abraham Accords.”
Bin Salman sounded non-committal in his remarks to reporters. “We want peace for the Israelis. We want peace for the Palestinians,” he said. “We want them to coexist peacefully in the region.”
Trump and bin Salman also said Iran could be brought into the fold.
The U.S. president said Tehran “would very much like—I mean, they may say something else, but they would very much like to have a deal” with the United States, after Washington’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities this summer.
“I think we’ve done a great job in wiping out the nuclear capacity of Iran. Nobody else could have done that. No other president would have done it,” Trump said.
Bin Salman said Washington and Riyadh “are working closely together on that issue.”
“We would do our best to help to reach a deal between America and Iran, and we believe it’s good for Iran’s future to have a good deal that would set the path for the region and the world and America,” the prince said. “We will do our best to see that day happen.”
Trump pushed back heavily on questions to bin Salman about Saudi involvement in the terror attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and bin Salman’s reported involvement in the brutal murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which pushed bin Salman into pariah status for years.
“I feel painful about 9/11 families in America, but we have to focus on reality,” bin Salman said, of relatives of victims of the attacks protesting his visit. “The reality is that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people at that event for one main purpose, which is to destroy the American-Saudi relation.”
“That’s the purpose of 9/11,” the prince said.
Bin Salman told reporters that “it’s really painful to hear about anyone who is losing his life for no real purpose,” speaking about Khashoggi.
“It’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We did all the right steps of investigation in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We’ve improved our system, and it’s painful and it is a huge mistake and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
Trump insisted on Tuesday that bin Salman knew nothing about the 2018 slaying and dismemberment of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, although Trump’s intelligence apparatus disputed that in his first term in office.
Trump is slated to host bin Salman and a group of investors, entrepreneurs and celebrities at a black-tie dinner at the White House on Tuesday evening.
