President Trump said on Monday that he planned to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns from national security officials in his administration that a sale could create an opportunity for China to steal the planes’ advanced technology.
“We will be doing that, we will be selling F-35s,” Mr. Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office, adding that the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”
“Look at the Iran situation, what we did in terms of obliterating — we obliterated their nuclear situation,” he said, seemingly referring to strikes that the United States and Israel carried out against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Israel flew F-35s during those attacks, which might have set Iran’s nuclear program back by months.
Mr. Trump’s announcement came on the eve of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia’s visit to the White House, where he was expected to discuss purchasing 48 of the fighter jets and a potential mutual defense agreement.
Saudi Arabia has long been the biggest purchaser of American weapons. But its conduct on the world stage has made some in government wary of the potential national security implications of giving Riyadh unfettered access to some of the United States’ most sensitive stealth technology, even if the kingdom has deep enough pockets to purchase it.
A recent report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, part of the Pentagon, raised concerns that China would be able to access F-35 technology if the United States finalized a deal to sell Saudi Arabia the warplanes, as Riyadh and Beijing have a security partnership.
Officials have also raised concerns that such a sale could compromise Israel’s regional “qualitative military edge” as the only country in the Middle East that currently has F-35s in its war arsenal. Israel has been pushing for the Trump administration to broker a deal to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, a goal that was showing some promise before Hamas’s deadly invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The bloody years of hostilities that have ensued since in Gaza have largely ended the prospect of such a pact. Nevertheless, some Republican lawmakers are uneasy about allowing the F-35 sale to go through unless Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel, according to people familiar with those discussions, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been actively lobbying members of Congress against it absent that condition.
Robert Jimison and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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