As for the main ribs of the event in Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Washington, the Emirati-Israeli normalization agreement that was announced last August 13 and signed on Tuesday mid-September was like smoke that quickly flew shortly after it was exposed, and took its place more dramatic skirmishes that have amplified in the past weeks and until Today, after knowing the most important thing that the agreement will facilitate for the UAE: a huge purchase of advanced American weapons and systems, but what is most controversial is Abu Dhabi's desire to acquire the jewel of Lockheed Martin's industries: the newest F-35 generation fighters in the world.
During the efforts prior to the announcement of the agreement in August, no party referred to the arms sales discussions that took place parallel between the Emiratis and the Americans, but most of those familiar with the negotiations agreed that Netanyahu was aware of the UAE's list of shopping from US arms factories, and a New York report confirmed The Times “early last month that he showed no objection to the list, including F-35s, in exchange for official normalization, and only a few members of his government knew about it, while the defense minister, his cold ally and his former rival for prime minister, Benny Gantz, were kept in the dark. Until some details of that list were leaked.
F-35
On the other hand, the Emiratis have for years collided with the wall of American refusal to sell the fighter to them, as their desire to possess the plane goes back to 2014, and although most informed sources agreed that only normalization was like a green light to pass that deal without major Israeli objections or heavy obstacles from Congress, despite These reports did not indicate that the UAE’s acquisition of the fighter seemed to be an almost inevitable result two years ago, specifically since the US-Emirati cooperation moved to an unprecedented level after "Little Sparta" obtained the latest American encryption techniques known as "Mode5" or "Format 5" systems. ".
Military air traffic control systems for military aircraft are known as enemy-friend-identification systems or "IFF" for short. Development of "Format 5" began in 1995, and in 2002 NATO ratified an agreement that adopted the system, also known as "Mark XIIA". A major surveillance system in which technology has represented and is still the future standard for all military airborne transmitting, receiving, monitoring and identification systems. To simplify the matter, Format 5 uses more sophisticated encryption techniques to overcome performance and security limitations in “Format 4” systems technologies, and provides broad capabilities To handle heavy data securely, it allows the transmission of huge amounts of data without electronic interference or confusion.
Format 5 technology is one of the most accurate American monitoring, data analysis and target designation systems, and it was developed by NSA technicians, and Washington shares it only with its closest military allies: some but not all of NATO members, Japan in Asia, Brazil in Latin America, and Israel in the Middle East. Therefore, it was very important when sources told Intelligence Online in 2018 that the UAE was about to acquire advanced technology, which meant that it had already preceded some of the alliance countries themselves for a technology that would be the future standard with its development, as we mentioned, and he stated at the time that it is likely For Oman in the future to acquire the technology to supply its squadrons of US "F-16s", then Saudi Arabia will follow them.
The F-16
The UAE’s acquisition of technology was practical evidence that it had become closer to the inner circle of the military allies of the United States, which includes only a very limited number of countries, and it was also clear evidence that the sale of the F-35 aircraft to it, which comes equipped with the "format." 5 "Directly, it became a" practically imposed result, "so it was not surprising what US President" Donald Trump "said one day before the signing of the normalization agreement that he had no problem selling the same weapons sold to Israel to the Gulf states, describing this as" a good thing for the states. " The United States and its job market, "adding that it is" very rich countries in most of them, so I personally have no problem selling the F-35 to the Emiratis, "but he deliberately or unintentionally ignored that selling the plane would carry fundamental problems to the security doctrine of his closest allies and public friends of Abu Dhabi The new ones, the Israeli friends.
In an unstable region that bears constant political storms such as the Middle East, Israelis know very well that today's friends may be the enemies of tomorrow, no matter how otherwise it seems, so it was not surprising that outrage erupted, especially among the military, when some Israeli press websites were revealed after the announcement of the agreement in mid-August / Last August, he comes with the arms deal in his heart, especially the new "Lockheed Martin" masterpiece, but what provoked more anger is what was revealed that Netanyahu knew of the Emiratis ’desire during negotiations of the agreement and did not mind, giving it a green light.
The skirmishes began since then, and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office publicly denied, a few days after the announcement of normalization, that it agreed to the deal, and said that Netanyahu opposed the sale of advanced weapons to the UAE in his meeting on July 1 with David Friedman, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, and that objection was raised. Repeatedly on the American side, stressing the importance of not selling the "F-35" to any country in the Middle East, this objection was formally embodied in a letter from Netanyahu via Friedman to US Secretary of State "Mike Pompeo" on the day immediately following the meeting of the Israeli ambassador.
Netanyahu next to the F-35
These public objections angered the Emiratis, and this appeared little in the statements of the UAE Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, on August 20, six days after the announcement of normalization, when he said that he “does not understand the Israelis’ concern about the potential sale, and he does not know the extent of That concern was intertwined with Israeli domestic policy, "in an implicit indication that Netanyahu's denials and his objections may come to calm his angry opponents at home, and Gargash added that his country has" legitimate requests that exist and must obtain them, "and that the normalization agreement will facilitate the US sale of" F- 35 "to them that the idea of war with Israel" no longer fully exists, "as he put it.
The US President’s son-in-law and his closest advisor, Jared Kushner, joined Gargash three days later, saying the same words of the Emirati minister about facilitating the normalization agreement to sell the fighter during his visit to the region, and on the 24th of the aforementioned month, the UAE’s anger was evident when the Axios website reported that it was canceled Abu Dhabi held a tripartite meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York between the ambassadors of Israel and America and the Emirati ambassador to the organization, and that day carried a quick visit from Pompeo to occupied Jerusalem in which he met Netanyahu to officially discuss the normalization agreement, but the "F-35" deal was present at the table of that meeting, Especially with the Emirati demand that the prime minister stop expressing public objections to the potential deal.
This meeting resulted in Netanyahu returning to the agreed path regarding the deal, while the Emiratis began to deal more calmly, starting from last September, when they realized that the coming period will carry many official Israeli objections, and that it will likely be theatrical objections to calm the interior, but the deal will accelerate Its natural course, although the winds of those objections were not only in Israel, but Washington witnessed and still some of those objections;
Especially with information circulating about some US State Department and Defense officials' uneasiness about the growing Emirati influence in the corridors of the White House, especially when Emirati military officials received a secret briefing on the F-35 last July.
Senior Adviser to US President Jared Kushner and US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien pose for a group photo with Major General Falah Al-Qahtani in the UAE Air Force at Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi
It seems that the Emirati pressure has been successful, and the Israelis have likely realized that Washington is determined to sell the aircraft to the Emiratis now and perhaps to the Saudis in the future, so Netanyahu went on the path of appeasement when he said, after his public objections, that he trusted the United States and its preservation of Israel's military supremacy in the Middle East, Likewise, his cold ally, Defense Minister "Gantz", softened many of his objections, and said that the franchise sale "is in the end an American concession, not an Israeli." Then, on Monday 21 of last month, he went to Washington to discuss with his American counterpart, Mark Esper, about selling fighters to the UAE and how to complete The deal in parallel with preserving the military qualitative advantage of the occupation army.
"Giora Eiland," the famous war planning general and former head of the Israeli National Security Council, has a different opinion. As for him, Netanyahu did not have to deny the Israeli approval to sell advanced weapons to the Emirates, indicating that normalization is a deal like any deal with a certain amount of concessions and a price. Of course, no side will get everything it wants, and in his opinion that what Israel will get from signing the agreement is much greater than not, although with a long-term view, the UAE’s acquisition of advanced weapons and F-35 aircraft will often open the door to Arab demands for such deals, "Eiland" in his comments to the "Jerusalem Post" believes that despite precedents such as those, including the sale by Washington, for example, of copies of Apache helicopters to Egypt, more advanced than those owned by Israel of the same type;
The encouragement of Arab and Gulf states in particular, led by Saudi Arabia, to normalize after the Emirates is much more important than that, because in the end Tel Aviv will win a lot from a region bound by peace agreements, friendly regimes in power, and continuous and public diplomatic, technical, economic and military exchanges, and the most important thing is that the military preference will remain the same. It is often as long as the Israelis are allowed to possess and modify highly sophisticated American weapons that Washington does not allow any other country at all, and as long as Israel remains the most recipient of American aid in the world.
Ironically, the shining example of this Israeli exception is the F-35 fighter itself. Israel, and Israel alone, are allowed to modify the F-35 fighters to suit the needs of the occupation army. The F-35 Eder (the Israeli version) is described as a doping version. A metaphor for its combat advantage over the other versions of the plane, and the Israeli version has been modified quite extensively, and Washington has allowed Tel Aviv to make the fighter almost Israeli from within, a privilege that no other country in the world has received, so that it is said that the Israelis know things about combat that do not The Americans themselves know it, and it is a satirical phrase that spread in the American and Israeli capitals as a metaphor for the massive Israeli amendment to the combat.
F-35 Eder (Israeli version)
Israel is the first and only country until the moment to use the fighter in the Middle East, and it has been a main pillar of Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria since 2018, and by next November the Israelis will have 27 F-35 Eder aircraft.
It is a number that represents the nucleus of three fighter squadrons from them, and the Israelis are studying the purchase of 25 other aircraft, in a desire to bring the number of stealth aircraft owned by the Israeli Air Force in general to 75 aircraft.
Therefore, despite its possession of the largest air fleet in the world after the United States, a fleet that was contributed to by a huge number of different American aircraft, headed by more than 300 "F-16" aircraft, which Tel Aviv has obtained periodically since the mid-1990s;
Despite this, the Israelis are always aware that they are in a politically unstable region and always filled with the winds of change, even if things seem stable and the opposite of that image, and because the Israeli security doctrine is based on this perception, they are always keen to stay one step ahead of all the countries of the Middle East, so no Their main concern is probably that Abu Dhabi acquires advanced weapons and F-35 stealth fighters, or that it may employ them against them in a distant, if unlikely future, but they are more concerned that Abu Dhabi's possession of such weapons will often open a major arms race in the region. It may threaten their qualitative military superiority.
Supplying the UAE with F-35s is not a trivial or simple thing, and as former Israeli deputy national security advisor Chuck Frisch describes it, it is not "just an advanced military technology but an integrated weapons platform." And if the sale is made, the planes will represent a "dramatic upgrade to the military capabilities of the UAE." As he put it, what the UAE requested is not only the latest American fighter, but the negotiated package includes "Reaper" drones, one of the most effective military targeting machines, and the highly advanced electronic warfare "EA-18G" aircraft. Grouler "is produced by Boeing Military Industries, which is the most advanced electronic warfare plane in the US Navy and in the world, and no country other than the United States owns it except Australia (a key ally of Washington), and these aircraft have the ability to jam the enemy's military defenses to pave the way for high-speed attacks. For stealth aircraft such as the "F-35" or advanced bombers.
The Emirati wish list also includes the Boeing V-22 Osprey, which are the only aircraft that combine vertical take-off and landing capabilities like any combat helicopter, and at the same time fly at speed, altitude and range of fixed-wing aircraft, and last but not least Abu Dhabi wants some electronic systems. Although it is not known yet what it is, but the complete list includes what we know of it is currently under discussion, a matter confirmed by Morgan Ortagus, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, saying: “There are lengthy discussions currently about equipment, aircraft and other weapons on the table,” which was endorsed by the New York Times. By revealing that the Trump administration is working hard to bypass lawmakers and push the deal to its final place ahead of the November elections, while Reuters revealed a few days ago that the deal may be signed next December.
And because the Israelis do not measure their national security with the Arab countries on the basis of agreements and systems of government, no matter how well-established as we mentioned, besides that any arms race needs at least two parties, Tel Aviv has taken a decision not to sit still and watch the Emirati pursuit only, but rather began to take measures to ensure preservation Despite its military superiority, it formed a team last month tasked with compiling a semblance of an Israeli wish-list for the purchase of certain American systems and weapons to maintain that supremacy in the region, a list we suggest that "Gantz" proposed some of them in his recent meeting with his American counterpart, "Esper."
This is led by Lieutenant General Tomer Barr, who was promoted at the beginning of this year to the position of commander of the planning sector "FDD" in the occupation army. Israel Today stated that the list will not be approved before its end, but the political and military leadership (Netanyahu, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, President Staff General Aviv Kochavi) has already approved the team's working mechanisms and general direction in weapons requests.
There is very much that the US military only possesses that the Israelis may ask to maintain their qualitative military superiority in the Middle East, and this superiority is not just a constructive phrase or a political commitment, but rather a legally obligatory matter for any US administration since 2008. For example, Tel Aviv has not yet managed to obtain The most stealthy and possibly the most advanced fighter ever made to date: The F-22 Raptor, the older and more expensive Sibling of the F-35, was banned from export to any country in the world under a legal amendment called the "Obai Amendment" in 1998 for fear that its stealth technology could be leaked to governments Others, but the idea of ordering it may be removed from the table due to its high cost and maintenance costs.
They can also order a copy of the F B35, which is the only copy in the "F-35" family "three copies" capable of short takeoff and vertical landing, or what is known as "Stoffel", a copy that will give the Israelis if they have more capabilities to cope with any Iranian air attacks. Or a missile from the Lebanese Hezbollah, but they have great reservations about it, which is that it is a version that carries fewer weapons.
In the recent period, there has been much speculation in the Israeli press about what their generals might request in exchange for passing the Emirati deal without objections, including the above, and also the massive bombs that penetrate fortifications such as "GBU-57A / B" and "GBU-43 / B", but a closer look You may see more important and effective potential Israeli demands. For example, Tel Aviv can request the submission of delivery dates for deals already agreed upon, such as the P-22 aircraft deal, KC-46 fuel planes, and perhaps a squadron of F-15s, or even the F15x, which is the latest version. From the fourth generation plane to Boeing, and it is possible to agree to increase military aid to it (Israel is the largest recipient of US aid in the world), and to clarify the matter, the 2016 agreement that Obama signed and signed by Trump on the first days of his assumption of the presidency is considered the largest US aid package for a country in its history, and Israel receives Through him $ 38 billion in military and financial aid within a decade (until 2026), so Netanyahu can negotiate an increase in the package in the next decade's agreement 2026-2036.
An Israeli F-15
The Israelis can also push the United States to replace the old ammunition in its warehouse on the occupied lands with smart and precisely directed ammunition and weapons, which is among what the occupation's national security depends on in the event of a confrontation with Hezbollah or Iran regardless of the possibility of that war in the near future or not. It is possible that Tel Aviv may request a reduction in the classified classification of some monitoring, reconnaissance and early warning systems and request their import, in addition to requesting amendments to the "Five Eyes" intelligence agreement, which is an intelligence alliance that includes America, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and Australia, and cooperates with its members other countries such as Japan and Singapore. And South Korea and Israel itself, which is an opportunity for Tel Aviv to even request joining the alliance to become the "six eyes" to precede the most fortunate candidate to join "Germany", and that joining will come in the interest of the Israelis, especially as the coalition members pledge to strict legal agreements not to spy on each other, which reduces the space Intelligence intervention directed against each other to a large extent.
The Israelis will not be satisfied with this, and the news of the past few days has leaked about solutions on offer to ensure the preservation of the Israeli qualitative edge even with the likely acquisition of the UAE "F-35", including the supply of advanced American radar systems specially equipped to identify the Emirati copies of the plane. Abu Dhabi to take logistical measures to ensure that the "F-35" is not used in a sudden, rapid attack on the occupied territories, as it did with Saudi Arabia when it delivered the "F-16" planes, on condition that its bases be far from Tel Aviv's airspace. For Washington to sell the Emiratis less armored and technical copies than the usual F-35s exported to other countries, and it is not known yet whether the Emiratis would accept reduced-class copies of aircraft if this solution were offered, but they would most likely try hard to obtain fully functional copies such as these. Which were sent to Washington's other allies.
But the irony is that the greater benefit of Israel and its military industries from passing the deal without objections will most likely come through the Emiratis themselves. A special report by the Israeli economic daily "Calcalist", according to sources, said that Washington and "Lockheed Martin" are likely to discuss with Abu Dhabi the manufacture of 35 pairs. Wings for "F-35" fighters by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The "IAI" production line in "Lod" is one of only three lines / companies that manufacture the "F-35" wings worldwide. "Lockheed Martin" in the state of Texas includes the US army's fighters, and another production line in Italy supplies NATO countries, produced by the Israeli line for fighters designated for non-US customers or NATO countries, including those of the Israeli Air Force.
The report stated that the price of the wings is about three million dollars for the husband, and so far the Israel-based factory has produced 100 pairs of them. He added that the company has a framework contract with Lockheed to produce up to 800 pairs of wings, with a total value of 2 billion. Dollars, but the newspaper's sources denied that a final decision had been reached regarding the manufacturer, and added that another Israeli company, Elbit Systems, would be a potential beneficiary of the UAE deal, as it participates in the manufacture of advanced helmets for F-35 pilots with The American multinational "Rockwell Collins" company, the value of each helmet is 400 thousand dollars, with a total of perhaps more than ten million dollars, depending on the number of fighters that the UAE will receive if the deal is concluded.
It appears before us that the Israelis have concluded that the sale of fighters to the Emiratis has become almost a de-facto situation, especially after Abu Dhabi submitted a formal request about a week ago to the US State Department to acquire the fighters, a request that the Ministry passed to Congress for approval.
As usual, such a deal will face great resistance in Congress under the 2008 law, which stipulates that any US arms sales to the Middle East must not affect the military-technical superiority of Israel as mentioned, and there will be significant legislative obstacles as long as there is no official Israeli support for the deal. Obstacles that the Trump administration does not want and the Emiratis do not want in any way, especially since Congress has had not a few adventures in previous years with regard to disrupting US arms deals to the UAE and Saudi Arabia based on fears of "human rights violations" in Yemen, not on the basis of the only favoritism law for Israel. The last of those adventures was what happened in May of last year 2019 when Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, gave an emergency exemption to a huge deal on 22 batches valued at more than $ 8 billion in bombs and other weapons for Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, describing this state of emergency as "in order to deter adventures. Iran in the region, "as he put it.
As for the Trump administration, Iran's argument gives it a very spacious space in the worlds of buying and selling weapons full of interests and money, on the one hand, that argument gives Trump a permanent reason to bypass Congress and use the presidential veto in proportion to those interests, as he did when legislation nearly ended the American intervention in The Yemen war in April of last year, which is an intervention that comes by supplying Saudi Arabia and the UAE with huge quantities of weapons, monitoring systems and some intelligence aid, at which time Trump used his second presidential veto to block that law, and then later in the summer of the same year he used another to pass the arms deal The famous one that we referred to above, describing Saudi Arabia as a "bulwark against the malicious activities of Iran and its proxies, and preventing the deal would harm America's global competitiveness and harm its relations with its allies in the region."
Trump loves the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and he sees them as the most important customers of American weapons, perhaps in the whole world, especially with Emirati defense spending of 23 billion dollars annually and constantly increasing, which is a cake from which Washington takes the lion's share of about 20 billion dollars that goes to the military industrial complex, so it was not surprising, for example. That Trump signed only five months after assuming the presidency, in May 2017, a defense agreement with Abu Dhabi, prepared since the era of the Obama administration, who did not sign it, worried that the UAE would put its hands on American technical units and aircraft on its soil, and Trump accepted and signed it during a visit Crown Prince "Mohammed bin Zayed" has him in Washington in the middle of the aforementioned month, and Trump approved training packages for Emirati pilots and special forces as well.
It is also not surprising that Congress has angered Trump in previous years until now with successive objections from Democrats and some Republicans to arms deals for the two Gulf states, including when a huge technical sales package that the Kingdom requested to link its military databases with those of its domestic security apparatus was suspended to build an integrated and tight security network. This raised typical concerns in Congress of Saudi violations of human rights at home, so the US President’s administration is trying to end the matter of congressional oversight of arms deals from the ground up for many months.
As for some American military and political analysts,
Granting this kind of military capabilities to the UAE, even if the arming of the aircraft is shortened, is incomprehensible. In their opinion, there is no obligation for the UAE to have aircraft with this progress, such as in an open state of war, for example, or large border tensions or a turbulent military region, which is what Not all are available in their condition.
But these and others ignore that the sale of "F-35" aircraft to the Emiratis will give an important advantage to the Americans, as the UAE Air Force will be closely and definitively linked to Washington, especially since the planes come equipped with "Format 5" directly, and the most important thing is that its technical backbone is a self-logistical information system. The control known for short as "ALIS", which is like the plane's nervous system, and this nervous system is linked through cloud computing to "Lockheed Martin" and sends technical data for all the planes, so what is overlooked here is that the current American security satisfaction with the Emirati trend that appears in the image Equipping it with some of the latest technical intelligence, interception, encryption and geospatial intelligence systems, as well as advanced weapons;
This satisfaction is not related to the ability of the UAE to pay the price only, but to the growing intelligence cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Washington in the past few years, and to the constantly increasing flow of information between the two countries, especially those that it collects and supervises the coordination and analysis of the US National Security Agency.
While the UAE is not expected to acquire the first fighter until the next six or seven years if the deal is signed this period, the F-35 controversy represents only part of the bigger picture. For the Emiratis and Israelis, forming a major security triangle in the region is a top priority A triangle consisting of the company of Saudi Arabia and with the participation of close allies such as Egypt, and this security arrangement aims for several things: the first of which is to avoid American confusion in the Middle East, and it is a constant confusion since the Obama administration, who saw that withdrawing from the region and handing its security keys to its main players is the safest solution for American interests.
The second is planning for the post-Trump period, to the extent that Trump adopts the Israeli agenda in dealing with Tehran;
He deals with the Gulf with the mentality of an impudent businessman, and only cares about the amount of money that he will get from the oil-producing countries, so for the Israelis and the Emiratis, Trump does not count on him as a permanent ally because he will not remain president forever, and the most important thing is that if he is completely hostile to Iran, he wants an American presence Politically, not militarily, in the region, which is a tacit and partial approval of Obama’s approach, an agreement that Abu Dhabi or Riyadh does not see in their favor, and the Israelis are well aware that it seriously harms their incursion plans in a volatile region hit by an Arab Spring and political protest has become a popular routine that Gulf rulers fear its transfer For the new generations there, and they are trying to prevent it through long planning, friendship with the most fierce enemies, and spending huge money on fierce security systems, with new ones added every day, with no close end.