- Trump says “we will sell the F-35s” during his Oval Office remarks.
- The sale marks a major policy shift and could test Israel's military advantage.
- KSA wants up to 48 planes in multibillion-dollar deal approved by the Pentagon.
President Donald Trump said Monday he plans to approve the sale of American-made F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a day before hosting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for a day of diplomacy.
“I will say we will do it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We will sell the F-35s.”
A sale would mark a significant policy shift, potentially altering the military balance in the Middle East and testing Washington's definition of maintaining Israel's “qualitative military advantage.”
Saudi Arabia has requested the purchase of up to 48 F-35 fighter jets, a potential multibillion-dollar deal that has cleared a key hurdle at the Pentagon ahead of bin Salman's visit. Reuters reported earlier this month.
The Saudis have long been interested in the Lockheed Martin fighter. A senior White House official said Reuters Before Trump said the president wanted to talk to the crown prince about the planes, “then we'll make a determination.”
Trump's approval comes despite New York Times reported that U.S. officials had expressed concern that rival superpower China could acquire the technology for the sophisticated fighter jet if the sale to Saudi Arabia went through.
So far, the United States has only allowed F-35 sales to its closest allies, including several European NATO allies and Israel.
Washington expelled Turkey from the F-35 program in 2019 because Ankara's purchase of a Russian air defense system raised fears that Moscow could acquire the plane's technology through the back door.
AI and nuclear energy on the agenda
The visit of the crown prince, widely known by his initials MBS, to the White House for talks with the US president is aimed at deepening decades-long cooperation on oil and security, while expanding ties in trade, technology and potentially even nuclear energy.
It will be the crown prince's first trip to the United States since 2018.
Trump is trying to cash in on a $600 billion Saudi investment pledge made during Trump's visit to the kingdom in May. During that trip he avoided mentioning human rights concerns and is expected to do so again.
The Saudi leader is seeking security guarantees amid regional turmoil and wants access to artificial intelligence technology and progress toward a deal on a civilian nuclear program.
Focus on defense agreement
Washington and Riyadh have long had an agreement for the kingdom to sell oil at favorable prices and for the superpower to provide security in return.
That equation was shaken by Washington's inaction when Iran attacked oil facilities in the kingdom in 2019. Concerns resurfaced in September, when Israel attacked Doha, Qatar, in an attack it said targeted members of the Palestinian group Hamas.
Trump later signed a defense pact with Qatar through an executive order. Many analysts, diplomats and regional officials believe the Saudis will get something similar.
Saudi Arabia has sought a defense pact ratified by the US Congress in recent negotiations. But Washington has made that contingent on the kingdom normalizing its ties with Israel.
Riyadh, in turn, has linked that to a commitment by Israel's government, the most right-wing in its history, to the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who agreed to a Trump-brokered ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza last month after two years of war, reaffirmed his firm opposition to Palestinian independence on Sunday.
A Trump executive order on defense similar to the Qatar pact would fall short of the defense deal the Saudis have sought. But Alghashian said it would be “a step along the way, part of the process, not the end of the process.”
A Western diplomat based in the Gulf summed up the dynamic: “Trump wants normalization and Saudi Arabia wants a full defense pact, but circumstances don't allow it. In the end, both sides are likely to get less than what they want. That's diplomacy.”
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he expects an executive order calling on the United States and the Saudis “to consult immediately on what to do in response to the threat,” without committing Washington to actively come to Riyadh's defense.
“That could run the gamut from providing a different range of assistance, replacing weapons, deploying defensive missile batteries like THAAD or Patriot, deploying naval forces with a Marine unit, all the way to actively engaging in combat offensively and not just defensively,” he said.
The agreement is key in the midst of regional rivalry
Riyadh has also been pushing for deals on nuclear energy and artificial intelligence under its ambitious Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy and strengthen its position relative to regional rivals.
Winning approval to purchase advanced computer chips would be critical to the kingdom's plans to become a central node for global AI and compete with the United Arab Emirates, which in June signed a multibillion-dollar deal for a data center in the United States that gave it access to high-end chips.
MBS also wants to reach a deal with Washington on developing a Saudi civil nuclear program, part of his effort to diversify away from oil.
Such a deal would unlock access to U.S. nuclear technology and security guarantees and help Saudi Arabia match the United Arab Emirates, which has its own program, and its traditional enemy Iran.
But progress on a deal with the United States has been difficult because the Saudis did not want to accept a US stipulation that would rule out uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing, both potential paths to a bomb.
Ross said he expected an announcement of a nuclear energy deal, or at least a statement on progress toward one.
