To wage war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is using F-15 fighter jets bought fromBoeing. Pilots from the United Arab Emirates are flying Lockheed Martin’s F-16 to bomb both Yemen and Syria. Soon, the Emirates are expected to complete a deal with General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions in their neighborhood.
.. Saudi Arabia spent more than $80 billion on weaponry last year — the most ever, and more than either France or Britain — and has become the world’s fourth-largest defense market, according to figures released last week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global military spending. The Emirates spent nearly $23 billion last year, more than three times what they spent in 2006.
.. American intelligence agencies believe that the proxy wars in the Middle East could last for years, which will make countries in the region even more eager for the F-35 fighter jet, considered to be the jewel of America’s future arsenal of weapons.
.. “A good number of the American arms that have been used in Yemen by the Saudis have been used against civilian populations,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an assertion that Saudi Arabia denies.
On Iran, the Least-Worst Option
If Iran adheres to the terms of the deal, as best as we understand those sketchy terms today, it will not have a nuclear weapon during the terms of the next one or two U.S. presidents. However, this deal, should it actually be ratified in June, formalizes Iran’s status as an eventual nuclear-threshold state by allowing it to maintain a vast nuclear infrastructure. This was not part of the international community’s original plan, and it is a cause for worry.
.. He and his team approached these negotiations assuming that Iran would lie, cheat, and steal, but he also holds out hope that a deal—and the economic benefits that flow from such a deal—will strengthen the hands of Iranian moderates. I tend to doubt this last part. I don’t believe that a bullying, terror-supporting, Assad-backing would-be regional hegemon whose ideology is built on anti-Americanism becomes more reasonable once it becomes richer and more empowered.
A Bad Day in American-Israeli Relations
Here, it is Netanyahu suggesting that there’s nothing personal—he just had to stoke fear of them to win the election, which surely they can understand; there’s no need to be “hurt.”
.. If Netanyahu doesn’t want Arab-Israelis to vote, for example, what does he want them to do?
A Divide Among Palestinians on a Two-State Solution
Mr. Abbas’s own son has been telling him that last chance is already long gone, the negotiations futile. The son, Tareq Abbas, a businessman who has long shied away from politics and spotlights, is part of a swelling cadre of prominent Palestinians advocating instead the creation of a single state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in which Jews and Arabs would all be citizens with equal rights.
“If you don’t want to give me independence, at least give me civil rights,” Mr. Abbas, 48, said in a rare interview at his well-appointed apartment here as his father headed to Washington. “That’s an easier way, peaceful way. I don’t want to throw anything, I don’t want to hate anybody, I don’t want to shoot anybody. I want to be under the law.”