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Proposed F-35 Sale to UAE Hits Snag

(Fox News) Eric Shawn - Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has raised concerns about the proposed sale of the F-35, the world's most advanced stealth warplane, to the UAE. "Any potential arms sales must continue congressional consultations on meeting our obligation to retain Israel's Qualitative Military Edge," the senator recently told the committee. Ranking member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if Israel's the only country in the Middle East that has F-35s, that selling it to someone else no longer produces that qualitative military edge in the air." Joel Rubin, president of the Washington Strategy Group and former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration, noted, "There is a long history of military cooperation between the UAE and both Russia and China, as well as significant trade with Iran, as the UAE is Iran's largest gulf state trading partner. These relationships create vulnerabilities that, if the F-35 technology falls into their hands, would render the superiority of our technology for us and our allies, like Israel, meaningless."
2020-10-08 00:00:00
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