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Trump says US will sell F-35 warplanes to Saudi Arabia as Israel ties sales to normalization

Iran Press TV

Tuesday, 18 November 2025 5:42 AM

The US is preparing to move forward with the sales of advanced F-35 warplanes to Saudi Arabia amid reported pressure by the Israeli regime that the sales be tied to Riyadh's normalization of its ties with Tel Aviv and abandoning the Palestinian cause.

President Donald Trump announced the intention on Monday, just hours before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was expected to arrive at the White House for talks.

Asked by reporters whether he sought to authorize the sales, Trump said, "I will say that we will be doing that. We'll be selling F-35s."

Trump added that Riyadh had expressed "strong interest" in acquiring the aircraft, telling him they "wanna buy a lot of jets" and have asked the administration to "look at it" as part of broader "security cooperation."

Multiple US outlets also reported that Trump was leaning towards approving the transfer.

Bloomberg, citing an administration official, reported that Trump and bin Salman were expected to reach an understanding during a Tuesday meeting that would green-light the purchase, alongside other major economic undertakings, including a liquefied natural gas deal. and "defense arrangements."

The potential move marks a major shift in Washington's Persian Gulf arms posture and comes amid widely reported intense Israeli lobbying aimed at shaping the conditions of any F-35 sale to Riyadh.

According to the American outlet Axios, Israeli officials have privately told the Trump administration they would not oppose the sale if Saudi Arabia abandoned its demand for a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for normalization of its ties with Tel Aviv.

"We told the Trump administration that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel," one Israeli official said, adding that any sale lacking such conditions would be "a mistake and counterproductive."

A second official said the regime could tolerate the transfer only if it became part of a wider US-backed regional "security framework" under the Abraham Accords.

The accords have seen Washington mediate normalization between the regime and several regional states in what Palestinians and their supporters have denounced as an abandonment of the Palestinian cause of liberation from Israeli occupation and aggression.

Israeli news website Ynetnews put the equation reportedly sought by Tel Aviv as, "Israel gives up the 'qualitative military edge'; Saudi Arabia gives up a Palestinian state."

Upon acceding to the demand, Riyadh would no longer stick to its proclaimed demand that normalization with the regime be conditioned on the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. The year saw the regime occupy more huge expanses of Palestinian and other regional territories during a Western-backed war.

Palestinians have already lambasted Riyadh and its allies for forsaking them by refusing to pay anything more than lip service in the face of the Israeli regime's Western-backed genocidal and other ethnic cleansing practices.