Nothing reshuffles the diplomatic deck like a stealth fighter. The American Saudi flirtation over up to 48 F-35s is not merely an arms sale; it is a rewriting of the rules that have long undergirded Middle East stability.
For forty years U.S. policy preserved Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) by limiting the spread of game changing systems or squeezing compensatory offsets out of every controversial sale.
Washington is offering Riyadh more than hardware; it is dangling access to the very technology that has kept Israel’s skies unchallenged for decades. That bargain is a gambit with three razor sharp stakes: normalization, decoupling from China, and a generational technological pledge that will bind U.S. policy for decades.
This deal marks a decisive pivot from denial toward managed proliferation.
For forty years U.S. policy preserved Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) by limiting the spread of game changing systems or squeezing compensatory offsets out of every controversial sale. The AWACS fight of 1981 proved the mechanism: sell to an important partner, but only after surgical controls and sweeteners to Israel.
Today’s puzzle is far harder. The F-35 is not a sensor or a radar; it is a platform whose stealth, sensor fusion, and netted lethality erase the old calculus. The question is no longer “if” another Arab power will own advanced U.S. kit; it is “on what political and technological leash.”
That leash, if it exists, comes in three pillars.
First: geopolitical normalization. Israel’s acceptance of any Saudi F-35s will be bought with political capital, real, verifiable steps toward full diplomatic relations and operational security guarantees. In short, the Kingdom must become more than a buyer; it must become part of the security architecture that the jets will fly for. Israel will not swap regional dominance for vague promises.
Israel’s acceptance of any Saudi F-35s will be bought with political capital, real, verifiable steps toward full diplomatic relations and operational security guarantees.
Second: a Chinese firewall. The crown prince’s Riyadh has in recent years balanced deepening ties with Beijing against its Western security partners. That is the vulnerable flank. The F-35’s lifecycle, from maintenance networks to supply chains and diagnostics, routes enormous volumes of sensitive data through systems that, if infiltrated, could hand adversaries a roadmap to stealth. Leaked intelligence warnings and investigative reporting now suggest that concerns about PRC espionage are central to the U.S. calculus. If Riyadh cannot convincingly sever or wall off critical Chinese defense links, the sale risks accelerating a strategic transfer of know-how that would compromise U.S. air dominance globally.
Third: a generational offset. All of these political and technical caveats amount to a recognition that mitigation is temporary unless Washington buys Israel the future. The only durable answer to another regional F-35 operator is to guarantee Israel priority access to the next leap, the NGAD and sixth generation pipeline. That is not a nice-to-have; it is the statutory reality of QME writ large: maintain a clear, decisive edge. But that commitment is a geopolitical yoke; it means decades of preferential R&D, procurement priority, and budgetary largesse. It also locks the U.S. defense industrial base into a political bargain that will be invoked every time regional balance is in question.
This triptych, normalization, China disengagement, and NGAD priority, reveals the fundamental bargain at the heart of the F-35 gambit: exchange immediate, transactionally useful military access for long term strategic alignment. If Riyadh delivers, Washington will have invented a new model of power projection: weaponize access to top tier systems to push states into geopolitical lanes. If Riyadh does not deliver, the sale will become a slow burn strategic error, diffusing stealth technology into a neighborhood where flight times are measured in minutes and miscalculation is cheap.
The F-35 deal can be a masterstroke of reforming the region’s security architecture or the worst kind of hedged bet.
There is a moral hazard problem baked in. A Saudi bedrock of U.S. security guarantees plus advanced jets could encourage riskier behavior by Riyadh and potentially deepen U.S. entanglement in regional conflicts. There is an entrapment risk for Washington too: guaranteeing Israel’s technological edge by committing priority access to next generation fighters is a fiscal and political obligation that will be invoked in every future arms negotiation.
If Washington pushes the sale through without ironclad, auditable strings, and without a credible, funded promise that Israel will retain a multigenerational lead, it will have broken a post Cold War bargain: the promise that American technology should strengthen friends without undermining them.
That is not transactional diplomacy; it is strategic malpractice.
The F-35 deal can be a masterstroke of reforming the region’s security architecture or the worst kind of hedged bet, an expensive, risky barter that rewrites deterrence to our detriment.
Published originally on October 19, 2025.
