标签： Asia

A sharp public rebuke from Iran’s top foreign affairs spokesperson has laid bare a dramatic breakdown in what was once a steadily improving relationship between Iran and Kuwait, bringing long-simmering regional tensions to a head.

Last week, Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, took to social media to label Kuwait as “part of the fire of the wicked,” warning that “the smoke of ingratitude and the absence of foresight will blind the eyes of the ungrateful.” The fiery comments came amid a wave of Iranian missile strikes targeting U.S. military installations hosted on Kuwaiti territory, part of a broader campaign Tehran has waged against American bases across the Gulf region since the start of 2024. Leveraging its long-standing strategy of asymmetric warfare to avoid direct confrontation, Iran’s strikes have inflicted substantial damage on the targeted facilities.

Kuwait has pushed back firmly against Iranian claims, denying that it allows the U.S. to launch offensive strikes from its soil and dismissing Iran’s attacks as “criminal aggression.”

To understand the current rupture, it is necessary to unpack the decades-long, roller-coaster history of relations between the two neighboring Persian Gulf states. The first major fracture came just one year after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, when Saddam Hussein launched his 1980 invasion of Iran. Kuwait aligned firmly with Iraq during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, providing billions of dollars in loans to Baghdad, opening its ports to Iraqi weapons shipments, and granting critical logistical support for Iraq’s war effort.

Dr. Alam Saleh, a Middle East affairs lecturer at the Australian National University, notes that Kuwait’s stance grew out of two core strategic fears. After the Islamic Revolution, Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah monarchy worried that Iran’s new revolutionary government would seek regional hegemony in the Persian Gulf, and would incite Kuwait’s large Shia population to rise up against royal rule. During the war, Iran was widely blamed for a string of attacks on Kuwaiti targets, including oil tankers, the U.S. and French embassies, Kuwait International Airport, and multiple hijackings of Kuwait Airways flights. But Saleh emphasizes that direct responsibility for these attacks on the Iranian state has never been definitively proven.

The dynamic shifted dramatically in 1990, when Saddam turned on his former ally and invaded Kuwait. Saddam justified the invasion by claiming Kuwait was using American-assisted drilling technology to overextract oil from the shared Rumaila field, driving down global oil prices and crippling Iraq’s already war-debt-burdened economy. Days before the invasion, a meeting with then-U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie left Saddam believing the U.S. would not intervene in the conflict, giving him what he saw as a green light to seize the territory he had long claimed as Iraq’s own. But the U.S. ultimately led a 42-nation coalition to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

In the wake of the invasion, Iran stepped in as a key partner for Kuwait, extending critical humanitarian assistance that is still referenced by Iranian officials today. As more than a million Kuwaitis fled the invasion to neighboring countries, Iran welcomed tens of thousands of refugees, including foreign workers, stateless people, and Iraqi nationals opposed to Saddam. The Iranian government set up temporary refugee camps in the southwestern border province of Khuzestan, providing food, shelter, safe passage, political asylum, and evacuation flights for those stranded by the conflict. Contemporary records show that British MPs who visited the camps praised Iran’s response to the crisis, with Conservative MP Michael Jopling noting in a 1991 parliamentary debate that “the Iranians seemed to be dealing adequately with the massive crisis which confronted them.”

Before retreating, Iraqi forces launched a campaign of systematic sabotage against Kuwait’s critical infrastructure, blowing up oil facilities, dumping millions of barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf (creating the largest marine oil spill in recorded history at that time), and igniting more than 600 burning oil wells. The toxic smoke from the wells spread as far as southwestern Iran, causing widespread air pollution, public health risks, and environmental damage in Iranian territory.

Iran again contributed to international recovery efforts, sending a team of 47 experienced oil industry experts and engineers to help extinguish the fires. Having built extensive expertise in oil facility repair and firefighting during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iraqi forces repeatedly targeted Iran’s energy infrastructure, the Iranian team was assigned to the heavily damaged Burgan oil field, Kuwait’s largest. Operating in dangerous conditions amid unexploded Iraqi landmines, the team successfully capped 28 burning wells. The operation was widely seen as a goodwill gesture that helped repair bilateral relations, as both countries now shared Iraq as a common enemy.

Over the following decade, relations warmed steadily. “Throughout the 1990s Iran and Kuwait expanded diplomatic dialogue, trade and security cooperation while managing their differences pragmatically,” Saleh explained.

But the growing U.S. military presence in the region, anchored in Kuwait, created a new fault line in the relationship. Following the Gulf War, the U.S. began building and expanding military bases across the Middle East; today, it hosts 13,500 troops across five bases in Kuwait, more than any other Middle Eastern country. Some analysts have even argued that the U.S. deliberately encouraged Saddam’s invasion to create a pretext for a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf to control regional oil production.

Tehran has long viewed the permanent U.S. military presence in the region as a threat to its sovereignty and a form of Western imperialism. “Iran opposes all long-term US military bases in the Persian Gulf, arguing that they undermine regional security, but generally separates this issue from its bilateral relations with Kuwait,” Saleh notes. Still, public evidence confirms that Kuwait has served as a key logistics and command hub for U.S. regional operations, contradicting Kuwait’s claims that it does not allow its territory to be used for offensive strikes. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Kuwait joined Bahrain in secretly launching airstrikes against Iranian drone and missile storage facilities, a move that deepened Iranian anger. Tehran has also criticized Kuwait for backing former U.S. President Donald Trump’s hardline policy toward Iran, which Iranian analysts view as evidence of Kuwaiti complicity in anti-Iran aggression.

The latest source of tension is Kuwait’s recent ratification of a five-year defense pact with Pakistan, the country that has been tapped to mediate between Iran and the U.S. in ongoing negotiations. While Kuwait and Pakistan first signed a defense partnership in 2023, the new agreement expands cooperation to include military training, personnel exchanges, intelligence sharing, and technology collaboration. While the pact itself is not unusual, analysts note its timing is significant, signaling a shift in Kuwait’s approach to regional security amid ongoing regional conflict.

Iran has responded cautiously so far. “Iran will monitor the agreement but is unlikely to oppose it unless it is used against Iranian interests,” Saleh observed. “Since Pakistan has also acted as a mediator, Tehran is expected to maintain constructive relations with both countries while closely watching developments in the Persian Gulf.”

Five years have passed since Tunisian President Kais Saied consolidated sweeping executive authority and dismantled the country’s post-Arab Spring democratic framework, but supporters of Tunisia’s largest Islamist movement, Ennahda, say the group is not finished — it is gearing up to rebuild and reemerge from the toughest crackdown in its modern history.

For many of the movement’s younger activists, the half-decade of targeted repression that followed Saied’s 2021 power grab is not the final chapter of Ennahda, but just the latest episode in a 40-year history defined by imprisonment, exile and systematic political persecution. Far from breaking the movement, they argue, the crackdown has pushed Ennahda to confront its past strategic mistakes, renew its internal leadership and lay the groundwork for a political future beyond Saied’s authoritarian rule.

“The idea that Ennahda has been defeated and that Tunisians no longer want Islamic parties is simply not true,” said 23-year-old Ahmed, a resident of Ettadhamen, a working-class Tunis suburb with deep historical roots of support for Islamist political movements. “More and more young people want a movement that is rooted in Islam, a movement that speaks to our identity and will stand up for Muslims being oppressed across the world. We are witnessing a resurgence and we will rise again.”

Ahmed’s public optimism stands in sharp contrast to the stark reality of Ennahda’s current position. Since Saied suspended Tunisia’s elected parliament on July 25, 2021, Ennahda’s iconic leader Rached Ghannouchi and dozens of senior opposition figures have been imprisoned, while much of the movement’s top leadership has faced prosecution or forced exile. Once the dominant political force in Tunisia’s decade-long democratic transition, Ennahda is weaker today than at any point since the overthrow of former authoritarian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. Yet even amid this unprecedented pressure, few within the movement accept that its political journey is over.

Founded in the early 1980s, Ennahda first emerged as Tunisia’s leading Islamist opposition movement under Ben Ali’s repressive regime, with thousands of its members imprisoned, tortured or forced into exile. When the 2011 Arab Spring uprising toppled Ben Ali’s 23-year authoritarian rule, the movement reentered public political life and won the country’s first democratic elections, positioning itself as a global model of what its leaders called “Muslim democracy.”

Unlike many Islamist groups across the Middle East and North Africa, Ennahda long argued that Islam and democratic governance were complementary, not incompatible. Over decades of political evolution, the movement shifted away from framing itself as a strictly Islamist party toward what Ghannouchi described as a party of “Muslim democrats,” formally committed to political pluralism, constitutional rule and peaceful transfers of power. At its landmark 2016 national congress, Ennahda formally separated its political and religious activities, ruling out the use of mosques as platforms for partisan campaigning.

Rather than advocating for the full implementation of Islamic sharia law as state law, Ennahda framed religion as a source of moral guidance for Tunisian society, while upholding democratic institutions, competitive multi-party elections and an independent judiciary as the legitimate foundation of governance. The movement’s official manifesto enshrined commitments to civil liberties, equal citizenship and political pluralism, positions that set it apart from many more hardline Islamist parties across the region. This gradual, moderate evolution won cautious backing from Western governments, which saw Tunisia as the only lasting success story of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Following Ennahda’s 2011 election victory, the U.S. State Department said it looked forward to working with the newly elected government to build a “democratic future,” while the UK Foreign Office welcomed the country’s free and fair polls and pledged long-term support for the democratic transition.

For Ennahda’s founding leadership, Tunisia represented a rare chance to prove that political Islam and inclusive democratic governance could coexist. But that vision was quickly tested by the harsh realities of governing. Though Ennahda never held power alone, governing instead in successive coalitions with secular political partners, Tunisia’s economy stagnated, youth unemployment remained persistently high, and successive governments failed to deliver the widespread economic improvements many Tunisians expected after the 2011 revolution. Over time, Ennahda became the public face of popular frustration with the slow pace of change during the democratic transition, creating a political opening that Saied exploited to cast himself as an outsider who would sweep away the corrupt old political class.

Saied’s July 2021 power grab reshaped Tunisia’s entire political landscape almost overnight. Ennahda supporters widely agree the movement’s biggest failures were not ideological, but strategic. They argue that years of prioritizing consensus-building with secular rivals and attempting to reassure domestic and international critics ultimately left the democratic system Ennahda helped build after 2011 vulnerable to authoritarian rollback. A key example of this miscalculation came during the 2019 presidential runoff: after Ennahda’s own candidate was eliminated in the first round, the movement refused to back polarizing media magnate Nabil Karoui and instead threw its support behind Saied. At the time, many party leaders viewed Saied as the safer, more neutral option, dismissing Karoui as a controversial figure too closely tied to the old Ben Ali-era political establishment.

Ahmed Gaaloul, a senior Ennahda official, says the movement seriously underestimated both the determination of its domestic and regional opponents, and the willingness of Tunisia’s international partners to accept the dismantling of the country’s democratic institutions. “We believed that no one would dare overthrow a democratic system that Tunisians had sacrificed so much to build,” he said. “We misread the moment.” He added that while regional powers hostile to the Arab Spring had worked to undermine Tunisia’s democratic transition, both Europe and the U.S. failed to step in to defend the country’s democratic gains. “The fragmentation and weakness was mainly in Europe,” he said. “They did not defend our democracy.” Instead, Gaaloul argues, Western governments increasingly accepted the narrative that Tunisia’s democratic experiment had failed, while turning a blind eye to Saied’s authoritarian reversal. “The whole democracy that survived for 10 years after the revolution was being let down,” he said.

For many of Ennahda’s younger members, this experience has sparked a broad internal reassessment of the movement’s long-standing approach to power. The arrest of most of Ennahda’s senior leadership has accelerated internal debates over whether the consensus-focused politics that defined the post-2011 transition ultimately left the movement open to being dismantled. “Many of us respect what Ennahda achieved after the revolution, but we also think it compromised too much,” said Hatim, a 28-year-old engineer and Ennahda member. “We spent years trying to appease everyone at the expense of our own party. Now, the younger generation, including myself, want leaders who are confident enough to pursue their programme instead of always making concessions. We don’t want endless consensus if it means abandoning our Islamic values.”

This view is increasingly widespread among younger Ennahda activists, many of whom argue the movement spent decades expending enormous energy proving to secular and international critics that political Islam could coexist with democracy, only to watch those same democratic institutions dismantled by Saied. Former Ennahda MP Maher Madhioub says the past five years of repression have given the movement space to reflect on its past mistakes. “Ennahda was not born in a government or one of the state’s institutions, but out of the huge sacrifices of its members over more than four decades,” he said. “It was born as a civil, public and universal movement. It won some elections and lost others, but it has always stood with the Tunisian people’s aspirations for liberty, dignity and justice. Governing was always a means to an end, not an end in itself.”

If Tunisia eventually restores democratic politics, Madhioub says Ennahda will reemerge as a changed movement. “There is no doubt that it has learned a lot from what happened,” he said. “It will be more confident in itself, its choices and its competent members, and it will take all its responsibilities.”

Whether a democratic opening will come anytime soon remains deeply uncertain. Saied continues to enjoy strong backing from neighboring Algeria, whose President Abdelmadjid Tebboune recently described Tunisia’s security as inseparable from Algeria’s own, and pledged to defend Tunisia against “any threat.” The remarks, made just days after the fifth anniversary of Saied’s power grab, underscore continued regional support for the Tunisian president despite growing international criticism of his authoritarian rule.

Even so, Ennahda members hold little expectation of an imminent return to power. They say their current priority is preserving the movement’s grassroots organizational networks, supporting imprisoned members and their families, and preparing for the day when Tunisia’s political space eventually reopens. “We haven’t left the political scene and are still here,” said Mohamed, a 31-year-old small business owner. “But in the future we expect the movement to speak more forcefully about what is happening beyond our borders. Whether it’s Palestine, Sudan or other crises affecting Muslims, Ennahda should have a stronger voice and stand up for people facing oppression. We want a leadership that will challenge others that are harming Muslims. We will not accept silence for the sake of diplomacy.”

Despite five years of systematic repression, Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, argues Ennahda remains too deeply rooted in Tunisian civil society to disappear entirely. “Ennahda specifically, and moderate Islamist parties in general, are here to stay,” he said. “Any real democracy in Tunisia or in the Arab world cannot exclude such an important and critical part of society. I do think there will be a place for Ennahda in a new democratic Tunisia, just like there will be a place for all other Islamic and secular political movements.”

For Ennahda’s supporters, the movement’s future ultimately depends not on when it returns to government, but on whether Tunisia restores democratic rule. “People thought we had disappeared before,” Madhioub said. “If Ennahda wins the first democratic elections held after the end of this terrible coup, it will be because it learned from what happened.”

Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical friction with China and depleting U.S. military stockpiles fueled by ongoing conflict in the Middle East, a small U.S. startup is stepping into a gap that has long left American defense supply chains vulnerable to external control. Phoenix Tailings, a small refinery based in Exeter, New Hampshire, is pioneering a new approach to domestic critical mineral production by extracting high-value rare earth elements from legacy mining waste, also known as tailings, a solution that could cut years off the timeline to build a sovereign U.S. supply chain.

For decades, China has held a near-monopoly over the processing and separation of critical minerals—inputs essential to everything from advanced fighter jets to precision-guided missiles, electric vehicle batteries, and radar systems. Even as the U.S. has raced to unwind this dependence by developing domestic mining operations, most new projects are still years away from full production. Extracting usable minerals from existing mine waste, however, offers a near-term bridge to meet soaring demand, industry leaders say.

Phoenix Tailings currently operates out of a modest office park facility, but the company has secured a $500 million loan from the U.S. Pentagon to construct a massive new expansion called the Freedom Facility, named for its mission to free the U.S. and its Western allies from Chinese influence in the rare earth sector. Construction of the new plant will take 14 to 18 months, and when fully operational, it will boost the company’s annual production capacity from just 200 kilograms to 120 tons of processed critical metal—enough to meet a large share of U.S. defense demand for high-priority minerals like samarium.

Inside the company’s current facility, technicians clad in heat-resistant hazmat suits and sealed face masks use a low-emission electrolysis process to separate pure rare earth metals from mining waste powder. The end product, a grayish mixture of neodymium and praseodymium, is used to manufacture high-strength permanent magnets that power F-35 fighter jets, Tomahawk cruise missiles, THAAD missile defense systems, military drones, and radar arrays. As Anthony Balladon, Phoenix Tailings co-founder and chief commercial officer, puts it: a $150 million advanced weapons system is entirely useless without the $20,000 to $30,000 in critical minerals it requires.

The urgency of this supply chain overhaul has accelerated sharply in recent months. Ongoing conflict in the Middle East has drawn down U.S. munitions stockpiles at an unprecedented rate, and the newly escalating tensions with Iran have further stretched already thin inventories. A May 2025 analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, warns that it could take at least three years to replenish stockpiles of key systems such as Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptors, and THAAD defense systems. Shortfalls not only leave the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies more vulnerable in the current conflict, but also leave the U.S. with diminished firepower for any potential future confrontation with China.

Last month, former President Donald Trump added new pressure to the sector with an executive order tightening restrictions on defense contractors sourcing critical mineral components from China. The order also curtails the Pentagon’s ability to issue waivers for contractors that claim domestic supplies are unavailable, making it mandatory for all critical materials used in U.S. military equipment to be sourced from the U.S. or allied nations. “It is the policy of the United States that not only the finished equipment deployed by our military, but also the critical materials and components necessary to manufacture, maintain, sustain, and repair that equipment, are sourced domestically or from allied nations,” the July 20 order states.

Major defense contractors have signaled they are working to adjust their supply chains. Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, said in a statement that it “continuously assesses the global rare earth supply chain to ensure access to critical materials that support our customers’ missions.” Other leading firms including Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman declined to comment on their supply chain adjustments to AP.

Balladon acknowledges that scaling domestic production to meet demand in the required timeline is a significant challenge. “It will be a tall order and a challenge to replenish these stocks and scale up in the time frame needed to meet defense demand and regulations,” he said. Still, the company is moving forward quickly, with plans to boost output to 5 tons within three months, and reach full 120-ton capacity by 2027 or 2028 at the latest.

Phoenix Tailings is not the only firm shifting supply chains away from China. Rochester, New York-based magnet manufacturer Arnold Magnetic Technologies, which supplies critical components for precision-guided weapons, has for years relied on Chinese-sourced samarium. Today, the company is sourcing its samarium from a restarted rare earth operation in La Rochelle, France, where Belgium-based chemical firm Solvay has resumed processing rare earths from legacy mining waste that was abandoned when China dominated the global market in the 2000s. After China weaponized its rare earth monopoly in 2025 by restricting exports during the U.S.-China trade war, Solvay restarted processing operations at the site, ramping up output to meet growing demand from both European and North American defense and industrial clients. While Solvay’s materials come at a higher cost than Chinese alternatives, Arnold CEO Matt Blake notes that the magnets represent a tiny share of total weapons system costs, making the price increase negligible.

Not all critical mineral supply gaps are close to being filled, however. Brodie Sutherland, CEO of Patriot Critical Minerals Corp., which is developing domestic tungsten mining operations in the U.S., warns that the U.S. remains fully dependent on imports for tungsten, with China controlling roughly 80% of global mine supply and an even larger share of downstream processing. With a 2027 Pentagon deadline to eliminate Chinese tungsten from defense supply chains approaching, Sutherland says U.S. production will take years to ramp up, leaving the Department of Defense reliant on existing stockpiles, recycling, and limited alternative sources in the near term.

Despite these headwinds, Balladon remains optimistic that U.S. companies and allied partners can meet the challenge. “Ultimately, with the right support and partners across the industry, we think we can make it happen,” he said.

During a recent press briefing on his visit to the White House in Washington, senior Israeli official — widely believed to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — outlined an ambitious new national defense plan: to develop an indigenously built stealth fighter jet paired with a purpose-built unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV). The core driver behind this initiative, Netanyahu has repeatedly emphasized in recent public remarks, is to eliminate Israel’s reliance on foreign military suppliers, whose political goodwill can no longer be taken for granted.

This long-simmering anxiety over supply chain vulnerability has been sharply amplified by a string of recent disruptions. The United Kingdom has suspended key military exports to Israel, while France has deliberately interfered with defense hardware shipments and blocked Israeli participation in major European defense exhibitions including Eurosatory and the Paris Air Show. These incidents add to a decades-long pattern of intermittent supply delays from the United States across multiple presidential administrations, including cutoffs of critical equipment such as Hellfire missiles, precision bombs, JDAM guidance kits, and tank ammunition under both the Obama and Biden administrations. Most recently, hostile remarks from senior figures in the current Trump administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, have further stoked Israeli concerns about the reliability of outside suppliers.

According to Netanyahu’s outline, the full development program is expected to take 10 years to complete. But the initiative faces steep structural and financial challenges, rooted in Israel’s own history of domestic aerospace development.

Israel has a decades-long track record of building its own fighter aircraft, with mixed results. Its first domestic program, the Nesher, was developed as a derivative of the French Mirage 5, pairing a French Snecma jet engine with additional Israeli and American components. The platform served effectively in the Israeli Air Force until it was replaced by its successor, the Kfir, and updated Nesher jets were later exported to Argentina, where they saw combat action against British vessels during the 1982 Falklands War. The Kfir, the next iteration of Israel’s domestic fighter program, incorporated upgraded American avionics and a General Electric J-79 engine — the same powerplant used in the U.S. F-4 Phantom. The Kfir has been exported to multiple countries, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Sri Lanka; while Ecuador retired its fleet in 2012 after 30 years of service, seven upgraded Kfirs remain in active service with Sri Lanka as of 2026.

But Israel’s most ambitious prior domestic fighter effort, the Lavi program, ended in dramatic cancellation. Launched as an all-weather, 4.5-generation fighter platform, the Lavi quickly suffered massive cost overruns that consumed more than half of U.S. foreign military assistance allocated to Israel in the 1980s. The Israeli military openly opposed the project, arguing that its ballooning budget was crowding out other critical defense priorities, including the Merkava main battle tank and national air defense systems. At the same time, U.S. aerospace firms viewed the Lavi as a low-cost competitor to their own F-16 and F/A-18 platforms, and lobbied the Reagan administration to withdraw funding support. In 1987, the Israeli cabinet voted 12-11 (with one abstention) to cancel the program, a decision that remains controversial in Israeli defense circles to this day, with many viewing it as a devastating missed opportunity for the country’s domestic aerospace sector.

Today, the new stealth fighter and UCAV program faces many of the same obstacles that doomed the Lavi, alongside new challenges. Any full indigenous stealth development would almost certainly still require access to American or European propulsion technology, with the U.S. being the only viable major supplier. The finished aircraft would also directly compete with offerings from major American defense primes including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics, meaning U.S. opposition would likely mirror the lobbying that derailed the Lavi. To move forward, Israel would likely need to negotiate a joint venture with U.S. industry or agree to export restrictions to ease competitive concerns.

Financially, the massive price tag of a full stealth development program would put significant strain on Israel’s national budget, threatening funding for other urgent defense priorities such as Iron Dome and other advanced air defense systems and precision smart weapons production. Additionally, Israel’s leading defense firms — including Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems — are already operating at full capacity to meet existing order demands and ongoing acute security requirements.

Against this backdrop, development of a standalone UCAV has emerged as a potentially more feasible alternative. Israel already has extensive experience integrating advanced unmanned aerial systems with its fleet of F-35 Adir stealth fighters, and UCAVs offer inherent stealth and performance advantages over manned platforms: removing the cockpit and pilot life support systems reduces radar cross-section, and unmanned platforms can withstand extreme G-forces that would incapacitate human pilots.

Even a UCAV program, however, would still face major hurdles. Like a manned stealth fighter, it would require an American-built powerplant, and the U.S. is already far along in development of its own Loyal Wingman collaborative combat aircraft (designated the F-47), which is scheduled to reach initial operating capability by 2030. The U.S. platform is designed specifically to augment the combat capability of F-35s, absorbing risk during strikes on heavily defended high-value targets such as enemy air defenses and command nodes, and will eventually complement the U.S. Air Force’s upcoming sixth-generation NGAD air dominance fighter that will replace the F-22 Raptor.

Ultimately, defense analysts conclude that Israel lacks the industrial depth, manufacturing capacity, and financial resources to develop both a manned stealth fighter and a new UCAV from scratch. A more pragmatic path could involve converting existing manned aircraft platforms into unmanned combat platforms, reducing development costs and timelines. As Israeli leaders weigh this critical strategic decision for the future of the country’s domestic defense aerospace sector, they will need to balance long-term strategic goals of supply independence against near-term budget realities and pressing security requirements. Most analysts expect that Israel will ultimately abandon plans for a fully indigenous manned stealth fighter, and will restructure its UCAV ambitions to align with its financial constraints and operational needs.

This analysis was contributed by Stephen Bryen, former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, and appears originally in his newsletter *Weapons and Strategy*.