The golden mean on arms sales in the region from Israel’s perspective has always been maintaining Jerusalem’s qualitative military edge (QME). QME: Maintaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge Indeed, there are often reports of secret contacts between Israeli and Saudi leaders over just this matter. Moreover, with the growing threat of Iran, Israel has for years realized that the Arab Gulf monarchies share a common interest with it. This is because Israel knows that arms sales are important for political and economic reasons.

After all, because of the Holocaust, Germany has always had a special and sensitive relationship with Jerusalem and has never sold arms to countries still at war with Israel.īut in actuality, Israel has a long history of looking the other way when its friends and allies sell arms to its enemies. Surprisingly to some, in Israel there was nary a sound. In early July, Germany’s prestigious weekly Der Spiegel reported that Berlin was set to sell 200 of its most advanced main battle tank, the Leopard Type 2A7+, to Saudi Arabia.

Fully operational battle tank for sale