Key Points: Saudi F-35 Sale Summed Up in 3 Words – Rewrite the Rules
-Donald Trump’s bid to sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia collides with decades of U.S. law meant to preserve Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge—but it also exposes how much the regional map has changed.
F-35I Adir High in the Sky. Image Credit: IDF/Creative Commons.
F-35I Adir Fighter. Image Credit: Israeli Air Force.
F-35I Adir. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Rather than reject the deal outright, Washington should use it to rewrite the rules: tie top-tier arms access to formal ties with Israel and embassies in Jerusalem, demand action against Hamas networks, and screen buyers for long-term regime stability and China ties, including Huawei.
The result could be a tougher, cleaner framework for future high-end U.S. weapons sales in the Middle East.
How to Sell Saudi F-35 Stealth Fighters
President Donald Trump wants to sell F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Kingdom would not be the first regional country to acquire the newest generation of U.S. aircraft.
Israel already flies the F-35. The United Arab Emirates considered buying 50 F-35s in 2021 but suspended the purchase due to disagreements over U.S. conditions on their use and technology included in the package.
U.S. concerns about balancing the sale with requirements to preserve Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge likely contributed to the impasse.
However, broader distrust between United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and the Biden administration may also have led Abu Dhabi to reconsider its multibillion-dollar purchase.
Saudi Arabia to get F-35?
The question now is what is different about any proposed Saudi sale.
Trump does not value process the way his predecessors, both Democratic and Republican, did. The Qualitative Military Edge remains relevant. Its roots lie in the existential threat Israel faced in the first decades of its existence. Israel was tiny, and every Arab state sought its eradication.
Arab states could lose wars and exist to fight another day, but for Israel to lose a single war would mean its destruction and likely mean a second Holocaust.
This reality was plain, but the population of Arab states was at least two orders of magnitude greater than that of Israel. The Jewish state could never match Arab armies in either manpower or equipment.
Initially, both the United States and the Soviet Union believed Israel could be its ally. Many early Zionists were socialists, which is why in 1947 Moscow voted for Palestine’s partition and the creation of a Jewish state at the United Nations.
Even after Israel refused to be a Soviet puppet, it was not always clear that the United States would support Israel.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower almost destroyed NATO when he demanded Israel, the United Kingdom, and France end their military operations in 1956 to reverse Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser from nationalizing the Suez Canal.
Eisenhower’s realpolitik calculation was simple: Israel was one country, but, in that year, ten Arab states were already independent. If sacrificing Israel was the price to win over the population and oil wealth of the Arab world, then it was a price Eisenhower was willing to pay. Only after the 1958 Beirut crisis did he recognize that such calculations were simplistic. For cultural and ideological reasons, Israel was simply a better ally.
With the United States committed to Israel’s support, the Pentagon formulated the Qualitative Military Edge. It was a formula, later written into law, to ensure that military sales to Arab countries would not erode Israel’s technological advantage. Arabs might enjoy quantity, but Israel would always have quality.
An F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia would not be the first challenge to the Qualitative Military Edge. The reason why President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 AWACS early warning aircraft sale was so controversial at the time was that Israel believed it would erode its qualitative edge. Reagan pushed the sale through over the objections of both Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobby that advocates for strong ties and partnership between the United States and Israel.
What Could Happen
Times have changed.
Not only is AIPAC far less influential, but geopolitics has changed as well.
While the Qualitative Military Edge formulation was proper when the greatest threats to Israel were neighboring Arab states and the Gulf Cooperation Council oil emirates, today these former adversaries face common enemies in Iran and Turkey.
Trump’s desire to sell the F-35s to Saudi Arabia may be controversial, but it should be the start of a new conversation about the source of threats in the Middle East today. Israel reportedly seeks formal relations with Saudi Arabia as a precondition.
Still, Trump might go further: Any regional country seeking U.S. arms should not only have formal relations with Israel, but its embassy should be in Jerusalem.
After all, only East Jerusalem is disputed. To reject embassies in West Jerusalem is to reject Israeli sovereignty altogether. Likewise, to fail to define Hamas as a terror state and arrest its members and financial supporters within the prospective purchasers’ territory should be grounds for voiding the deal, and that country forfeiting its deposit.
Congress should also raise the bar regarding the stability of weapons purchasers.
Never again should there be a situation like Iran’s in which the Shah purchased what at the time was America’s most advanced aircraft, only for the country to transform into an enemy almost overnight.
Saudi Arabia is changing, but the engine for that transformation is Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, a single man who, while unlikely, could be replaced by someone reactionary and antagonistic to both the United States and Israel. Only those countries in which the Intelligence Community can say with high confidence will be stable ten years into the future should gain access to the highest U.S. technology.
Congress should also put conditions on potential recipients regarding China. Do business with Huawei? Then the risk factor of the United States transferring its top-shelf weaponry is too great to bear.
Trump’s critics should not dismiss the F-35 purchase out of hand; instead, they should consider how it can be the deal that shapes all future deals and truly Make America Great Again.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The opinions and views expressed are his own. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea on the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, covering conflicts, culture, and terrorism to deployed US Navy and Marine units. The views expressed are the author’s own.
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Jim
November 16, 2025 at 3:06 pm
Can there be an idea of parallel diplomacy?
The United States supports Israel as its closest friend in the region over many years.
The United States has been friendly with Saudi Arabia over many years.
Each has benefited from this relationship.
The United States wants to keep good relations with both.
The qualitative edge concept is important and most Americans have supported the idea for decades.
How to square the circle? And engage with both friends in the region while being mindful of how each sees the other and its relationship with the United States?
A formula type solution as suggested herein is a reasonable framework to start the process.
What ultimate framework or protocol ends up being relied upon is for diplomacy to work out, but each is a long-time friend for its own historical reasons. Each a friend we want to work with well into the future.
A helpful idea which we’ve been working on is to develop trust, economic ties, and “the give and take of cordial, civil discussions” along regular channels of diplomacy between the two parties, themselves.
The United States can help with that.
The proposed sale of F-35’s to Saudi Arabia (with enough trust and common interests) could open the door to better military to military relations between the two nations. If there’s enough trust & respect between the two parties.
The United States should do its best to facilitate the conditions needed for the sale to go through.
That takes a sound diplomatic approach towards both nations.