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Divided Senate fails to block Donald Trump's UAE F-35 deal, critics fear jets will be used in Yemen and Libya

International human rights groups have accused UAE of targeting civilians in Yemen and violating international arms embargo in Libya

President Donald Trump has little over a month left in the office but before the exit, his administration has approved an arms deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worth $23 billion. The deal includes F-35 jets, advanced drones and other weapons that the US gave to the UAE after the latter agreed to recognize Israel, strengthening Trump’s Israel-leaning policy in the Middle East. 

The Democrats failed to block Washington from going ahead with the arms deal with most senators ruling out the possibility of Trump flagging off a threatening arms race. On Wednesday, December 9, the effort to block the sales fizzled out in the Senate with a couple of resolutions falling short of the majority despite Israel advocates, human rights groups and lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican camps showing concerns. 

Dem senators vote against resolution, GOP senator questions move

While one resolution focused on the F-35 jets, the other one focused on Reaper drones. The first one failed by 47-49 votes while the second one by 46-50 votes. Both the Democratic senators from Arizona which Joe Biden won in last month’s presidential election -- Krysten Sinema and Mark Kelly -- voted against the resolution on drones. Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky who usually supports Trump but is critical of his foreign military interventions, was the only crossover to team up with the Dems on this issue. He asked what if the UAE misused those sophisticated weapons. 

The Senate is a narrowly divided chamber at the moment and a couple of runoff elections scheduled next month will determine who goes on to dominate it in the near future. 

Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt, who also holds the position of the chair in a couple of committees in the Senate, said the selling of weapons to Abu Dhabi supported Washington’s jobs and provided “reinforcement of our friends who see common enemies and are working directly to move their country and their region in a much better direction.”

Trump had threatened to veto the resolutions if they were passed, implying that both the Senate and House needed two-thirds majorities to overcome his resistance. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget said the administration “strongly opposes” the resolutions and asserted that the arms sales “directly support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States”, NBC News reported. It also said in a statement that the weapons would help the UAE “deter increasing Iranian aggressive behavior and threats issued in the wake of that peace deal”.

The Trump administration has been preparing to sell as many as 50 F-35 jets, up to 18 Reaper drones and munitions to the UAE over bipartisan congressional opposition, even as its time in office fast approaches the conclusion.

“We continue to work with the UAE on the letters of offer and acceptance that, if concluded, would finalize any deal,” Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs R Clarke Cooper said on Tuesday, December 8.

Robert Menendez, a top Democrat who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agreed that Iran is a threat but added that the US also needs to understand what threats the F-35s or the drones will be addressing when it comes to Tehran. He pointed out that Qatar, another US ally in the Middle East that is under sanctions by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is already pushing for its own F-35s. 

“Do we really think that we can sell this just to the UAE and not have those other countries come knocking on our door and starting a very sophisticated arms race in the tinderbox of the world?” the New Jersey senator asked. He also expressed concern over the discovery of Emirate’s arms shipments to Libya, which is under a UN arms embargo, and on reports that the UAE has also sought military relations with China and Russia. 

But while the state department feels the arms transfer to the UAE and other nations in the region will help Washington’s Gulf allies tackle Iran and improve Israel’s security, critics say it will only provoke an arms race vis-a-vis Tehran.

Israel changes stance

Even Israel is not too assured with the US-UAE deal. In August, even as Israel signed a landmark US-brokered peace deal with the UAE, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly expressed his opposition to the sale of the F-35s to the UAE, saying it reduces his country’s “qualitative military edge” over its neighbors -- something which the US itself has been aiming all these decades. Netanyahu also said then that the F-35s were not part of the peace agreement. 

Israel, however, changed its stance later. In a joint interview with the UAE ambassador to the US this week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, said: "What keeps me up at night is actually not the proposed F-35 sale to the Emirates. What keeps me up at night is the idea that somebody would return to the nuclear deal with Iran." It was certainly the next administration led by Joe Biden that was at Dermer’s receiving end. 

International human rights bodies have, meanwhile, sought an end to the sale, accusing the UAE of targeting civilians in Yemen, selling American weapons to extremist forces and violating the international arms embargo in Libya. 

“These US drones could be responsible for UAE attacks that violate international humanitarian law and kill, as well as injure, thousands of Yemeni civilians already bearing the brunt of the one of the world’s most devastating humanitarian catastrophes,” Philippe Nassif, the advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA, was quoted as saying by NBC News.

F-35s are one of the costliest warplanes manufactured by Lockheed Martin and carry high-end sensors and data-collection tools. They can be used for airstrikes, air-to-air combat and intelligence gathering.