Trump Wins His Big UAE Weapons Deal: GOP Senate Refuses to Block the Sale

Cream of the Crop Going into UAE Hands 

A big weapons deal and the GOP-run Senate dropped the ball – cite this story from the Washington Post: Trump remains on course to complete a controversial $23 billion arms sale to the UAE after bipartisan Senate efforts to block the deal failed to gain enough support to clear a critical procedural hurdle and to override the threatened Trump veto.

A majority of senators voted against two motions to block the sale of 50, F-35 fighter jets, Reaper drones, and other military equipment, stymying the effort to stop, or at least slow the sale of cutting-edge weaponry to a country with which the United States has an exceptionally tense alliance. When the sale is completed, the UAE will become the first Arab country to acquire F-35s, setting a standard that other deep-pocketed buyers will likely seek to follow.

Senators backing the legislation have raised alarms about the speed with which the Trump administration has tried to complete the sale, which was announced in the wake of the Emiratis signing a peace deal with Israel. They have also warned that the administration’s end-run around Congress sets a dangerous precedent of cutting lawmakers out of national security deliberations. 

Advocates of the arms deal have argued that selling the attack aircraft and munitions to the Emirates will improve Israel’s regional security, and is a necessary reward to Abu Dhabi for signing the peace deal. Israel’s response to that is seen here.

Trump allies said the UAE is worthy of this sale because it is strongly aligned with the United States in the Middle East. Voting down this sale would signal to our partners that even when they do everything we ask … the U.S. won’t have their backs.

Citing evidence that the weapons sold to the UAE previously ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked militias inside Yemen, they questioned, too, whether UAE had proven itself capable of protecting some of the most sensitive American military technology.

And they noted that the UAE’s defense relationships with Russia and China makes the stakes of the UAE’s trustworthiness particularly steep. The Saudis have previously expressed interest in buying F-35s. But weapons sales to Riyadh have recently taken a nosedive, falling from $15 billion in fiscal 2019 to just $1.2 billion in fiscal 2020, in the face of revelations about Saudi culpability in killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and increased scrutiny of the devastation in Yemen.

My 2 cents: This is a very bad deal and poor decision for so many reasons. The #1 reason being the sale of the 50 F-35’s – simply put: That is not a wise military-related move.

Keep this in mind as noted above also: “Evidence shows that U.S. weapons sold to the UAE previously ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked militias inside Yemen. Whether the UAE had proven itself capable of protecting some of the most sensitive American military technology is one huge question.”

And, also keep in mind that any big money deals like this in the end ultimately benefit Trump just like it did Kushner when he got a big loan guarantee for his property in deep debt with a loan from Qatar addressed in this article – remember?

Thus, anything Trump does is for his own financial gain – never forget that. Nothing else matters and it never has.

Thanks for stopping by.