Douglas Barrie
Israel remains the only country in the Middle East to have received the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II combat aircraft, but could president-elect Donald Trump’s return to office reopen the door to sales with some of the Gulf States? In 2017, his first year in office, he trumpeted arms sales to Saudi Arabia worth hundreds of billions of dollars over a ten-year period; might he now try to do the same with the F-35?
Irrespective of the recent anti-F-35 musings by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, one of Trump’s picks for a role in his government, there remain opportunities for considerable F-35 sales in the region. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been interested in the aircraft, with the last coming closest to a deal during Trump’s first period in office.
In the run-up to the United States election, UAE officials reportedly said that even if Trump were to be re-elected, they did not expect discussions to be reopened. The extent to which such comments, however, were down to political propriety remains unknown. But there are indications that the F-35 continues to be of interest to the UAE, almost a decade after it first indicated it wanted to purchase the advanced combat aircraft. In the final days of the Trump administration in January 2021, a letter of agreement was finalised for the purchase of up to 50 F-35s.
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