US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he expected Saudi Arabia to join the agreement announced last week by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalize diplomatic ties and forge a broad new relationship.
"I do," Trump replied when asked at a White House news conference if he expected Saudi Arabia to join the deal.
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Under the accord, which Trump helped broker, Israel agreed to suspend its planned sovereignty bid in areas of Judea and Samaria. The agreement also firms up opposition to regional power Iran, which the UAE, Israel, and the United States view as the main threat in the Middle East.
In Saudi Arabia's first official comment since the agreement was announced, its foreign minister said on Wednesday the Sunni kingdom remained committed to peace with Israel on the basis of a 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
Earlier in the news conference, Trump called the UAE-Israel accord a good deal and said "countries that you wouldn't even believe want to come into that deal." He did not name any other countries besides Saudi Arabia.
Trump also said the UAE was interested in buying F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin Co, which Israel has used in combat.
"They have the money and they would like to order quite a few F-35s," Trump said.
The United States, meanwhile, would ensure Israel maintains its regional military edge if US F-35 warplanes are ever sold to the UAE, the US ambassador to Israel said in a Jerusalem Post interview on Wednesday.
Ambassador David Friedman's remarks to the newspaper followed a report on Tuesday that Washington planned to sell F-35s to the UAE as part of the Gulf country's US-brokered deal last week to normalize ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would oppose any such sales to the UAE, citing a need to preserve Israeli military superiority in the region.
The Yediot Ahronoth daily, citing American and Emirati sources, reported that Israeli acquiescence to the sales had clinched the deal for the Emiratis. Further, it reported that Netanyahu had made the deal behind the back of the Israeli defense establishment and kept Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, both former military chiefs, in the dark about it.
Netanyahu said Gantz had been updated on his opposition to F-35 sales just weeks ago.
Gantz seemed to question Netanyahu's denial in a televised statement, saying he was only informed of last week's blockbuster accord after the fact. Gantz, who also serves as the alternative prime minister and is Netanyahu's chief coalition partner, is supposed to replace Netanyahu as premier next year. Gantz vowed to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge at any price.
On Israel's Channel 13 TV, Education Minister Yoav Galant accused Netanyahu's political rivals of spreading false allegations that UAE purchase of F-35s, aircraft already in Israel's arsenal, was part of the normalization deal.
Friedman said that while it was hypothetically possible the UAE would one day receive permission to buy F-35s, their manufacture and procurement "would take many years."
Friedman said that as the UAE seeks more advanced weaponry "the QME process will kick in as it has before."
He was referring to decades-old understandings under which Washington has refrained from Middle East arms sales that could blunt Israel's "qualitative military edge." This has applied to the F-35, so far denied to Arab states.
In the Channel 13 interview, Galant said Israel and the United States had differed in the past over US arms sales in the region.
"They sold the F-15 [fighter jet] to the Saudis years ago. We also didn't like that at the time," Galant said.
"But all these years, the United States maintained our qualitative edge. That means, when others had the F-15e, we had the F-15i – a grade above," he said.
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