We sold the Gulf states a security guarantee, armed them to the teeth, triggered the threat we promised to protect them from, and now the weapons don't work. Other than that, great deal!

By THE MIC CHECK - March 16, 2026

The pitch for the Abraham Accords was elegant in its simplicity: normalize relations with Israel, buy extremely expensive American weapons, and in exchange, the United States and its affiliated defense contractors will guarantee your security against Iran — the regional bogeyman that has kept Gulf monarchies writing checks to Washington since the Tanker War. The Abraham Accords, signed with great fanfare in September 2020, were marketed to the American public as a historic peace breakthrough. They were marketed to the Gulf states as something more honest: a security architecture. Normalize with Israel and you get access to the good stuff — F-35s, THAAD batteries, Patriot upgrades, the full catalog. The UAE’s normalization was accompanied by a $23 billion arms package that included fifty F-35 Lightning IIs. The implicit logic was not subtle: we are arming you against Iran, and Israel is now your friend, so buy the weapons and enjoy the peace.

Five years later, the crown jewel arrived for Saudi Arabia, the Accords’ white whale. In May 2025, Trump flew to Riyadh to sign what the White House called the largest military cooperation agreement in U.S. history: a $142 billion arms package for Saudi Arabia that included THAAD missile defense systems, Patriot PAC-3 upgrades, a thousand advanced air-to-air missiles, armed drones, and enough ordnance to make Lockheed Martin’s quarterly earnings call sound like a victory speech. The deal was designed, in the administration’s words, to “help modernize the Saudi military with state-of-the-art equipment to address threats from Iran and its proxies.”

Nine months later, the United States launched an unprovoked war against Iran, and ensured that those threats arrived on schedule. The weapons don’t work, and the clients are furious.

Here’s the part that makes this a comedy rather than a tragedy . . .

[SNIP]