The United States approves the possible sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia for $24.3 billion. The deal, still subject to congressional approval, raises questions about Israel’s military advantage and strategic balances in the Middle East.
On September 17, the US State Department said it had approved the potential sale of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Just as the largest Arab state in West Asia is increasingly involved in the war against Iran and the Houthi movement in Yemen. The sale, however, marks a significant shift in US policy, potentially altering the balance of military power in the Middle East by violating one of the US’s own rules of maintaining Israel’s qualitative military advantage as its ally in the region. The issue is therefore about ensuring that Israel obtains more advanced US weapons than regional Arab states. It is difficult, at the moment, to know exactly what the Arab variant of the Joint Strike Fighter could be like and how different it could be from the standard held by the Israeli air force, but what has already happened several times is that Trump, due to his propensity for sales, has shared technologies with nations considered reliable at the time only to then have to regret it, as happened with Turkey, precisely for the F-35s. The story of the supply of these aircraft to Saudi Arabia began in January 2025, when Saudi Arabia made a direct appeal for the planes to US President Donald Trump and has long been interested in the Lockheed Martin fighter. The sale has an estimated value of 24.3 billion dollars and must receive the approval of the United States Congress to become executive. Once the legislative process is completed, Lockheed Martin will receive the order for 48 new production units and the engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney for 49 units of the F135 engine along with communications equipment, spare parts and other components for logistics support. The Saudi embassy in Washington welcomed the proposed sale, describing it as a further step in defense cooperation between the two countries and releasing a message on the “X” social network: “The proposed sale of the F-35 reflects the strength and enduring nature of the strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia and the United States and the continued progress of our defense cooperation.” In fact, Saudi Arabia today is the largest customer of U.S. weapons and has sought for years to modernize its air force to counter regional threats, particularly those from Iran. Today, Riyadh’s air force operates with different types of aircraft, from Boeing F-15s to Tornados and Typhoons. For many reasons this supply could be defined as historic, since the F-35 issue was also intertwined with very broad diplomatic efforts: for example, the administration of former US President Joe Biden had explored the possibility of supplying the fighters to Saudi Arabia as part of a global agreement that would have included Riyadh in the normalization of relations with Israel, but then the diplomatic efforts had reached a stalemate. In his style, Donald Trump has made selling arms to Saudi Arabia a priority. In 2025 the US agreed to sell Riyadh an arms package worth almost $142 billion, which the White House called “the largest defense cooperation agreement” that Washington had ever signed. But today Saudi Arabia is pursuing ambitious economic and military modernization plans under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030” agenda. And it is discovering that it is vulnerable to blows from Tehran and the Houthi rebels. Against which the F-35s can strike but cannot be decisive.
