שלום חייל! (מרחבא אסקר)

@SODIsraelChannel

@SODIsraelChannel

אדוני הנשיא, האם אתה מתכוון למכור מטוסי F-35 לטורקיה, ומה לגבי ההגבלות החוקיות?

אנחנו עומדים לקבל החלטה. אני חושב שרבים – אני יכול לומר, רבים היושבים כאן – יגידו, מדוע שלא נעשה זאת?

יש לנו יחסים טובים יותר עם טורקיה, וטורקיה הייתה, בדרכים רבות, נאמנה הרבה יותר ממדינות אחרות שאנחנו חושבים שהיו נאמנות.

ובטח משהו שאנחנו נשקול – כן.

אנחנו נדבר היום על סחר. אנחנו נדבר על דברים אחרים שקשורים לצבא, הרבה דברים שונים.

@SODIsraelChannel

Mr. President, are you going to sell F-35s to Türkiye, and what about the legal restrictions?

We're going to make a decision. I would think that many people — I can tell, many people sitting right here — would say, why wouldn't we do that?
We have a better relationship with Türkiye, and Türkiye has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal.

And certainly something we will consider — yeah.

We're going to be talking today about trade. We're going to be talking about other things having to do with the military, lots of different things.

להשמיד את ישראל.

@SODIsraelChannel

Destroy Israel.

קיבלנו הבטחה לחמישה מטוסים, והנשיא טראמפ גם הוא נתן את הבטחתו בנושא זה.

הנשיא טראמפ תמיד עומד במילתו. אני מאמין שתיקבע החלטה חיובית בנוגע לתוכנית ה-F-35.

@SODIsraelChannel

We received a promise for five planes, and President Trump also gave his promise on this issue.

President Trump always keeps his word. I believe that a positive decision will be made regarding the F-35 program.

We don't want to sanction friends.

הובטחו לנו 5 מטוסים

היכולות שלנו מרשימות

@SODIsraelChannel

It’s Tuesday, July 7, and I was raised with the belief that trust isn’t given - it’s earned. When Turkey, a NATO ally, lost the U.S.’s trust in 2019 by purchasing Russian S-400 air defenses, it was rightfully banned from receiving F-35s due to the risk of allowing Moscow to collect sensitive data on the fighter’s stealth signature. Now, according to The New York Times, Trump is likely to reopen the sale to Ankara, and for the life of me I can’t imagine how the Turks earned it.
Since 2019, they have kept every last unit of their S-400s - up to 200 missiles, many still in their shipping containers. They have remained the only NATO member that refuses to sanction Russia over Ukraine. They have hosted Hamas leadership in Istanbul and laundered billions for Iran, while Erdogan openly threatens Israel with destruction and, in Benjamin Netanyahu’s words this week, “talks openly about conquering Jerusalem.” They continue to occupy half of Cyprus - a fellow EU member - and to menace Greece, another one. Not to mention, this is the same country Trump himself claims he had to stop from joining Iran in the last conflict.
If trust isn’t earned, it seems it can be bought. The salesman on the account is Tom Barrack, the billionaire real estate investor, longtime Trump friend and ambassador to Ankara. Barrack doesn’t talk about Turkey’s conduct; he talks about the deal. The seven-year ban his own boss imposed? “Insane,” he says. The legal requirement that Turkey actually give up its Russian missiles? A technicality to be workshopped - the S-400s are inactive, he assures us, so possession is just paperwork. This is, in his own words, “classic Trump deal-making.” And when trust itself came up, Barrack showed us exactly what the word weighs in his ledger: Describing the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, America’s ambassador announced that “everybody has been equally untrustworthy.”
Netanyahu appears to have known about the impending sale and tried his best to derail it. During an interview with Fox yesterday, Netanyahu, unprompted, launched into an attack on selling the technology to “a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘Death to America.’”
There was already early warning of this turn in late June, when the administration notified Congress of its intent to proceed with the sale of F110 engines to power Turkey’s indigenous fifth-generation fighter, the Kaan. Speaking alongside Vice President JD Vance, the president signaled he was prepared to make Erdogan “very happy” on both the engines and potentially on readmitting Turkey to the F-35 program.
A “very happy” Erdogan sends a chill down my spine; thankfully, Congress is poised to ruin his mood. The law bars F-35 transfers so long as Turkey possesses the S-400, so the administration is hunting for a workaround: hand the systems to some unnamed third party (a mechanism, one official admits, that hasn’t been worked out), or pull a few key parts and declare them “inoperable.”
And then there’s Israel. U.S. law obligates Washington to preserve its qualitative military edge, the guarantee that Israel outflies every rival in the region. Handing the region’s premier stealth fighter to Israel’s next regional rival certainly undermines that supremacy. To preserve the gap, Israel may receive further access or compensation of that nature.
Even if Erdogan gets his announcement at this week’s NATO summit, the sale itself must survive a one-to-two-year gauntlet: some legal sleight of hand to make the S-400s “disappear,” lifting sanctions that remain in place, formal notification to Congress, and bypassing resolutions of disapproval lawmakers are already promising. Then Turkey joins the back of Lockheed’s queue, where recent customers have