{"id":2046,"date":"2015-04-25T10:04:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T10:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=2046"},"modified":"2017-11-20T17:25:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T17:25:20","slug":"us-to-deliver-f-35-fighter-jets-to-israel-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/us-to-deliver-f-35-fighter-jets-to-israel-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"US to deliver F-35 fighter jets to Israel next year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The United States will begin the delivery of new F-35 fighter jets to Israel next year, Vice President Joe Biden says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Addressing an Israeli Independence Day reception in Washington on Thursday, Biden said, &#8220;Next year, we will deliver to Israel the F-35.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said Israel would be the only one\u00a0in the Middle East to have America\u2019s \u201cfifth-generation aircraft\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Biden added that the United States wants Israel to maintain its &#8220;qualitative edge&#8221; over its rivals.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Under a $3 billion contract inked between Tel Aviv and Washington in February, the US agreed to sell 14 more F-35 aircraft to Israel.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 2010, Israel signed a contract with the US to buy nineteen F-35s manufactured by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin, for $2.75 billion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The delivery of the first batch of the jets will start by the end of 2016 and will continue to 2021.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In his speech at Israel&#8217;s embassy on Thursday, Biden attempted to downplay the bad blood between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;We&#8217;re like family. We have a lot to say to one another. Sometimes we drive each other crazy, but we love each other \u2014 and we protect each other,&#8221; Biden said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Obama administration is angry at Netanyahu for accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress on March 3 about Iran\u2019s nuclear energy program without consulting the White House as well as excessive Israeli lobby interference in American foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Israel faces deepening tension and isolation in its relations with the US and Europe over Netanyahu\u2019s opposition on the formation of a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nevertheless, America&#8217;s support for Israel still has strong bipartisan backing in Congress. The US provides Israel over $3 billion in annual military aid as well as other forms of assistance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">SB\/GJH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States will begin the delivery of new F-35 fighter jets to Israel next year, Vice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1,125],"tags":[227,6,252,26,5,7,63],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","category-united-states","tag-air-force","tag-defense","tag-f-35","tag-israel","tag-military","tag-u-s","tag-weapons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/F-35-Jets.jpg?fit=616%2C330&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-x0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2047,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions\/2047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}