Ahead of Trump’s departure for Turkey, Netanyahu says Ankara shouldn’t be given F-35s or fighter jet parts

Ahead of US President Donald Trump departure later today for a NATO summit in Turkey, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urges Washington not to sell advanced weaponry to Ankara.

Speaking to Fox News, Netanyahu calls Turkey “a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“I don’t think they should be given F-35s or engines for their fighter jets,” he insists.

Last month, Trump seemed to indicate he would agree to sell Turkey F110 fighter jet engines and readmit Turkey to the F-35 program.

Netanyahu argues that such a move would “upset the balance of power in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israel’s air superiority and also America’s posture in the Middle East.”

He calls Turkey “a great country” but laments that it is ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who openly threatens Israel with destruction and who occupies half of Cyprus.

Netanyahu says that no date has been set for an upcoming visit to Washington, DC, to meet with Trump, and once again downplays recent tensions over the US-Iran memorandum of understanding.

“We see eye-to-eye on just about everything,” Netanyahu claims.

“We have disagreements from time to time, but we work them out because we’re allies,” he says, noting that they speak about disagreements “in open conversation.”

“The president has his way of expressing things and so do I,” Netanyahu says.

“We’re allies,” he repeats. “We’re your model ally.”

He stresses that Israel respects the US, and that there are “multiple ways of ironing out our differences as allies that respect each other.”

He says Israel would “like to see peace with Lebanon advance” during his trip. “The fact that we basically hammered the Iranian regime, we weakened it substantially and that opened the path for more peace deals.”

On Iran, he emphasizes that the Islamic Republic is “not America’s friend, and we should not let them have nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them.”

“This is a battle of freedom versus fanaticism,” Netanyahu says.

Asked why the regime in Iran is still standing, Netanyahu says it is because it has “a few hundred thousand goons who kill, murder in broad daylight and at night. They murder their own people.”

Reflecting on America’s 250th anniversary, Netanyahu calls the US “a tremendous force for good…without America there wouldn’t be any democracy in the world or any freedom in the world.”

“God bless America,” he concludes.