Germany clears arms sales to Saudi Arabia — for Israel

Germany stopped selling weapons to Saudi Arabia over the war on Yemen’s Houthi militia. It has now started selling weapons to Saudi Arabia again, to intercept missile attacks from the same Houthis aimed at Israel.

IRIS-T missile | Image: Diehl Defence

Germany has made a U-turn on its opposition to arms sales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, allowing the export of fighter aircraft and missiles to the West Asian country, ironically, for some of the same reasons for which it had imposed the ban on these weapons sales, in the first place.

In support of Israel, Germany has decided to withdraw its veto over the sale of 48 Eurofighter aircraft by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia already has a fleet of 72 Eurofighter aircraft sold by the United Kingdom, which Germany has noted were deployed to intercept missiles fired by Houthi militants in Yemen at targets in Israel in recent weeks, in response to Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza.

The Eurofighter is built by a four-nation consortium that includes Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Germany’s decision appears ironic considering that it had stalled the sale of the fighter aircraft specifically because of concerns about the Saudi involvement in the war against the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in the civil war that has been waging in Yemen since 2014, besides the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi. German arms sales to Saudi Arabia were restricted in October 2018.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia had begun talks with manufacturer Dassault for the purchase of 54 French Rafale fighter aircraft.

But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated the changed stance, first acknowledged by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, that their government would no longer oppose the British sale of the fighters to Saudi Arabia. To the point where Germany has now approved the sale of 150 IRIS-T missiles to Saudi Arabia. The IRIS-T is an infra-red homing air-to-air and surface-to-air missile, especially useful for countering other surface-to-air and cruise missiles.

While Germany had already begun allowing exports of equipment and ammunition for Saudi Arabia’s existing inventory of Airbus A330 MRTT, Eurofighter and Tornado aircraft after Chancellor Scholz’s visit to the kingdom in November 2022, the German government clarified in July 2023 that it had stipulated that the weapons must not be used in Yemen. Scholz further made clear at the time that Eurofighter deliveries to Saudi Arabia were “not on the agenda for the foreseeable future,” with no plans to revisit the issue until the end of 2025.

Zeitenwende: Turning point (German, noun)

Zeitenwende was declared the German word of the year in 2022 after Chancellor Scholz delivered a speech to the Bundestag three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, adding emphasis by calling it an ‘epochal tectonic shift’ a few months later.

But Germany’s government remained initially sluggish in its response to the new reality of emerging fast-changing military-industrial requirements facing Europe, secure in the comfort of being surrounded by friendly countries across its immediate borders, unlike the Baltic republics and Poland to its east. Only the appointment of a new defence minister almost a year after the invasion got things finally moving faster to build its military production capacity and loosen restrictions on the supply of its weapons and equipment.

Germany’s ties with Israel grew slowly after the Second World War, with a reluctance on the part of Israel to trust the successors of Nazi Germany, despite increasing but quiet military sales to Israel that have included the Dolphin and (more recently) the future Dakar-class of submarines manufactured by German shipyard HDW, owned by ThyssenKrup Marine Systems (TKMS).

As it happens, TKMS is owned by ThyssenKrup, formed after the merger of Thyssen and Krupp in 1999, when it became the fifth largest company in Germany. Krupp is named for the Krupp family, which owned the business and the head of the firm was convicted as a war criminal for the use of slave labour by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal after the Second World War.

Zeitenwende or not, such memories are never distant for the Germany’s government, which continues to be guided on its policy towards Israel by multi-generational guilt over the genocide of Jews and other communities by Nazi Germany in the war, although in her time, former Chancellor Angela Merkel chided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the lack of progress on negotiations with Palestinians.

Since the October attacks on Israel by Hamas, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has offered robust support to Israel, with a nuanced caution to Israel on its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, underlined by the continued detention of German hostages after the October 7th attacks. Some hostages have been given German citizenship after the attacks to encourage their release. Germany’s decision to intervene in the International Court of Justice to defend Israel against charges of genocide brought by the Republic of South Africa in the course of its invasion of Gaza has been criticised by Namibia, which suffered German atrocities as a former colony.

Since the attack, Germany has supplied Israel with weapons and military equipment. Germany exported more weapons last year that ever before, worth almost USD 13 billion. And although the largest recipient of its weapons was Ukraine, German arms exports to Israel increased ten times in 2023 over the previous year with exports worth USD 350 million.

But while clearing Saudi Arabia to receive additional Eurofighter aircraft, Germany continues to object to their sale to Turkey by the United Kingdom and Spain — not entirely unexpected after the Turkish purchase of Russian S400 air defence systems and its stalling on NATO-membership for Sweden.

Germany has been further critical of Turkey’s stance on the Israeli war on Gaza after the October 7th attacks by Hamas. It has criticised Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Hamas a “liberation organisation” and accused Israel of “fascism.”

Turkey has been looking for 40 Eurofighter aircraft after its purchase of 40 F-16 fighters from the U.S. was blocked for stalling the entry of Sweden into NATO.

Turkey’s historical rival and fellow NATO-member Greece has begun acquiring Rafale fighter aircraft from France. Turkey and Greece have had a few tense moments that included dogfights between their fighter aircraft over the last few years over hydrocarbon rights contested for exploitation in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. But German objections on the Turkish Eurofighter purchase apart, the U.S. has begun the process for the sale of the F-16 fighters after Turkey approved the entry of Sweden into the NATO over the last week. In the same breath, the U.S. approved the sale of more advanced, fifth-generation F-35 fighters to Greece, denied to Turkey after it purchased the Russian S400 systems.

Conversely, Germany is appreciative of Saudi actions in intercepting Houthi attacks on Israel. The withdrawal of its veto of Eurofighter sales and the approval of IRIS-T missile sales to Saudi Arabia are for the sake of defending Israel from missiles launched by the same Houthi militant group against which Saudi Arabia had gone to war because of which Germany stopped selling it weapons.

In a further twist, Saudi Arabia has distanced itself from the U.S.-British strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The kingdom does not want to jeopardise its precarious truce with the Houthi group either and wants to find a formal exit from the conflict in Yemen.

And Germany continues to face criticism for not doing enough to support Ukraine with crucial military equipment for fear of escalating the war and provoking Russia.

More Zeitgeist, not Zeitenwende.