Last month, the United Arab Emirates became the third Arab country to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. This milestone, which was formalized through a White House signing ceremony earlier this month, was accompanied by discussions about the imminent sale of U.S. F-35 fighter jets to the UAE. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly opposed the country’s purchase of F-35s, but the Trump administration is working on a compromise that allows the U.S. government to sell the fifth-generation fighter jet to Abu Dhabi without eroding Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region. The preservation of Israel’s qualitative military edge—its ability to deter aggression from regional adversaries through technological and tactical superiority—has been a guiding principle of U.S. policy toward the Middle East since the 1960s and a codified tenet of U.S. law since 2008.
The prospective sale of F-35s to the UAE has faced pushback in the United States. The UAE’s alleged war crimes in Libya, which include an attack on a refugee detention center near Tripoli and a drone strike that killed unarmed cadets in Tripoli in January, as well as its oversight of torture facilities in Yemen, have raised ethical challenges to the deal. The country’s tightening relationship with China has provided further grounds for criticism.
