Enough is enough, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has allegedly told the United States, seemingly putting its foot down as it threatened to withdraw from a 23-billion-dollar defense deal with God’s own country over its onerous demands to impede China.
The report published in the Wall Street Journal indicated that Emirati officials informed the U.S. of the country’s intention to halt a deal to purchase American-made F-35 aircraft, Reaper drones, and other sophisticated munitions because “security requirements the U.S. had laid out to safeguard the high-tech weaponry from Chinese espionage” were becoming far too burdensome.
“The UAE has informed the U.S. that it will suspend discussions to acquire the F-35,” the WSJ states, citing a UAE official. “Technical requirements, sovereign operational restrictions, and the cost/benefit analysis led to the reassessment.”
The U.S., for its part, said that vacillation of this sort was commonplace in the selling and buying of weapons, however, it also raised some eyebrows:
“We remain committed to these sales, and the Emiratis have raised some concerns,” said a U.S. official. “Frankly, we have some questions of our own. This sort of back-and-forth is not unusual for significant arms sales and we are hopeful we can work through these issues and we think the joint military dialogue will give us an opportunity to do so.”
All seems not to be lost, however, as Abu Dhabi had one last word that seemed to say they were keen on renegotiating: “Discussions for the F-35 may be reopened in the future,” said the Emirati official.
