Revolutionizing Defense: The Future of US-Middle East Industrial Alliances

The Middle East is frequently dismissed as a costly diversion from more urgent global concerns. However, as the world becomes increasingly complex and unpredictable, reimagining our partnerships in this region can actually ease the United States’ strategic burdens and enhance our capacity to deter or engage in significant conflicts.

Our allies in the Middle East hold the potential to alleviate the strain on the collective industrial bases of the U.S. and its global partners. Much like during World War II and the Cold War, a robust defense industrial base is crucial to maintaining American strength, leadership, and economic growth.

Ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are putting this foundation to the test. These situations underscore the difficulties in producing essential raw materials, basic munitions, air and missile defenses, and other critical supplies needed by our forces and allies.

The urgency of these challenges will intensify if the U.S. becomes involved in drawn-out conflicts or needs to support concurrent military operations across various regions. As China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea grow closer in alignment, we must be ready for such scenarios.

Tackling these global challenges necessitates a comprehensive international strategy. The Pentagon, along with U.S. defense firms, is actively collaborating with allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific to bolster production capabilities, enhance technology sharing, and strengthen supply chain resilience.

Similar efforts are ongoing in the Middle East. Yet there is great, if untapped, potential to enhance these initiatives for everyone’s benefit, as elaborated in our organization’s new report. 

America’s close friends there have the drive, capital and critical resources to enhance production for many of the crucial materials, munitions, and platforms where current U.S.-led efforts cannot meet global demand.

Important groundwork is already being laid. Israel’s high-tech defense sector conducts extensive joint research, development and production with U.S. companies. 

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are diversifying global supply chains for critical minerals away from China’s near-monopoly control and, with it, Beijing’s dangerous leverage. All three countries are ramping up defense spending and investments in domestic industry for everything from strategic raw materials to weapons systems, including seeking joint ventures with U.S. and other Western firms.  

The Middle East’s growing potential is also evident in new partnerships signed during President Trump’s trip to the region, including stronger defense industrial cooperation with the United Arab Emirates. 

Working with Congress, defense companies and our partners, the Trump administration has a valuable opportunity to enhance these initiatives and support our partners in developing greater production capacity, supply chain resilience, and access to technology. 

To be most effective and expeditious, the United States and its partners in the Middle East should prioritize programs of record with minimal bureaucratic and legal strings attached. 

As momentum builds, the Defense Department, Congress and U.S. defense industry can work together to increase the opportunities for our partners to enhance their capability for domestic production and access to advanced technologies. 

To this end, the Trump administration must streamline and simplify its approach to foreign military sales and examine the legal and policy limitations in America’s existing export control regime. As per U.S. law, the executive branch and Congress can and must work together here, coming up with viable options to legislate reforms and sign them into law. 

Progress on this front can help change bottom-line incentives for the U.S. defense industry to view the Middle East, like it already does Europe and the Indo-Pacific, as an opportunity to boost global defense industrial capacity and resilience. 

Deepening our Middle East partnerships will benefit U.S. industry and economic productivity. Our partners will become more capable in self-defense, while the irreplaceable value of American leadership will be reinforced. 

In turn, we can move closer to achieving the potentially transformational goals identified during the president’s recent trip, while also expanding the Abraham Accords, integrating Middle East air and missile defenses, enhancing regional prosperity, and reducing our adversaries’ malign influence there. 

In all these ways, a new approach to the Middle East can make our own presence in the region more sustainable. It can also strengthen our core interests and deterrence throughout an increasingly troubled world.  

Gen Joseph Dunford, USMC (ret.) served as the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Amb. Eric Edelman was undersecretary of Defense for Policy and is a distinguished scholar at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Together they co-chair a project on U.S. defense industrial cooperation at JINSA.