After dinner, we talked privately for a long time about Iran, as I explained to him the president’s pivot from engagement to pressure, which the king heartily welcomed, having been opposed to any kind of outreach in the first place. As we talked about sanctions, I encouraged him to consider an overture to the Chinese, proposing that they sharply cut their purchases of Iranian oil, which Saudi Arabia would replace. I made no formal request, and he made no commitment. We discussed upgrading the Saudis’ Patriot missile defense systems, and we agreed to discuss further their acquisition of other, more advanced missile defenses. I promised to send the head of the Missile Defense Agency to Saudi Arabia quickly to brief the king and his ministers on these capabilities, which would also make the Saudi missile defense interoperable with our own and that of other countries in the Gulf. We talked about modernization of the Saudi navy.
In that private meeting, the king committed to a $60 billion weapons deal including the purchase of eighty-four F-15s, the upgrade of seventy F-15s already in the Saudi air force, twenty-four Apache helicopters, and seventy-two Blackhawk helicopters. His ministers and generals had pressed him hard to buy either Russian or French fighters, but I think he suspected that was because some of the money would end up in their pockets. He wanted all the Saudi money to go toward military equipment, not into Swiss bank accounts, and thus he wanted to buy from us. The king explicitly told me that he saw the huge purchase as an investment in a long-term strategic relationship with the United States, linking our militaries for decades to come. At the same time, Abdullah was very cautious about any kind of overt military cooperation or planning with the United States that the Iranians might consider an act of war.
I then went to Abu Dhabi, where I met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. “MBZ,” as we referred to him, is one of the smartest, canniest people I have ever met, very soft-spoken and given to long pauses in conversation. His thoughtful insights on the other Gulf states and on Iran were always useful. We met with a larger group for a few minutes, and then the two of us went outside on his patio to meet privately for an hour or so. We talked about the change in Obama’s Iranian strategy from engagement to pressure, making sanctions more effective (a lot of Iranian business was done in the UAE), and about additional missile defense and other military capabilities for the Emirates.
Any sale of relatively sophisticated weapons—especially combat aircraft and missiles—to an Arab state met with opposition in Israel. In the case of the big arms deal I had just concluded with King Abdullah, the Israelis were especially exercised. And it came at a bad time in the relationship. The administration had leaned heavily on Netanyahu in the summer of 2009 to impose a ten-month freeze on building new settlements on the West Bank, as an inducement to get the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Meanwhile construction continued on settlements in East Jerusalem, which the Israelis consider their sovereign territory. As a result, the Palestinians refused to negotiate. In March 2010—just as I was talking with King Abdullah—the Israelis announced they would continue to build settlements in East Jerusalem, an open slap at the administration, made all the more insulting because Biden was visiting Israel at the time. Secretary Clinton presented an ultimatum to Israel soon thereafter, demanding among other things a freeze on all settlement construction. This led to a notoriously acrimonious meeting between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House on March 26, during which the president bowed out to have dinner with his family, leaving Bibi cooling his heels downstairs.
As these tensions boiled, on April 27, Barak came to see me about the Saudi arms sale. As had become standard practice between us, I greeted his limousine curbside at the Pentagon, escorted him and his delegation up the stairs to my formal dining room, and then I walked him straight through the door to my office, where we met alone, leaving our delegations to chitchat for most of the allotted meeting time. As part of our relationship with Israel, the United States had long pledged that no arms sales to Arab states would undermine Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). Barak felt the sale to Saudi Arabia compromised their QME. I told him I thought Israel and Saudi Arabia now had a common enemy—Iran—and that Israel should welcome enhanced Saudi capabilities. I also pointed out that not once in all of Israel’s wars had Saudi Arabia fired a shot. I urged that if Israel couldn’t see Saudi Arabia as a potential ally against Iran, he should at least tactically concede that its hostility to Iran was in Israel’s interest. Pragmatically, I warned that if the Saudis could not buy advanced combat aircraft from us, they would surely buy them from the French or Russians, and the Israelis could be damned sure those countries wouldn’t give a second thought to Israel’s “qualitative military edge.”
We agreed to set up a joint U.S.-Israeli working group to ensure that Israel’s QME was not diminished by the F-15 sale to Saudi Arabia and to identify enhanced capabilities we could provide to Israel to satisfy that goal. I reassured Barak that, as I had promised two years earlier to Prime Minister Olmert, we would sell Israel the same model F-35 Joint Strike Fighter we were going to provide our NATO allies. Barak returned to Washington in late June to review progress of the working group and seemed generally satisfied that Israeli interests would be protected by the measures we were considering.
Netanyahu took another view. I met with him at Blair House, the guesthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue that the president uses to host foreign leaders, on July 7. I told him I had my marching orders from the president, and that General Cartwright would lead a senior U.S. team to Israel the following week to talk about military cooperation and needs and to get “specifics about what you need and just how fast you want it.” I told Netanyahu we intended to notify Congress soon about the F-15 sale to Saudi Arabia, that we had addressed the QME issues with his defense experts, and that “it would be helpful for Israel to say that there had been an unprecedented effort to take into account Israel’s concerns, and that they did not object to the sale.” When he complained about the number of F-15s the Saudis would be buying or upgrading, I pointedly asked him, “When did Saudi Arabia ever attack Israel? How long would those planes continue to work without U.S. support? You need to talk to Ehud [Barak] about what we have done to address your concerns!” When Netanyahu asked how to explain to Israelis such a large arms deal with the Saudis, I used the line that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. He replied acidly, “In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my ‘frenemy.’ ”
“What about a counterbalancing investment in our military?” he asked me. “How do we compensate on the Israeli side?” Exasperated, I shot back that no U.S. administration had done more, in concrete ways, for Israel’s strategic defense than Obama’s, and I listed the various missile and rocket defense programs we were providing or helping to fund, together with stationing an Aegis-class warship with missile defense capabilities in the eastern Mediterranean. Further compensation? “You are already getting air and missile defense cooperation in addition to the F-35. There have been conversations on all of this. This is not new. There has been enormous work done to address your QME. Talk to your defense minister!” I was furious after the meeting and directed Flournoy to call Barak and chew him out for not adequately briefing Bibi on all that we had done to address Israel’s concerns. Barak talked to Netanyahu, and by the end of July, Bibi had agreed not to object to the Saudi arms sale—in exchange for more military equipment, including twenty additional F-35s.