During an impromptu press conference, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark. T. Esper reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to maintain Israel's qualitative superiority in weapons sales.
Esper repeated the American commitment after meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz in the Pentagon. It was the second visit of the future Israeli prime minister to the Pentagon in less than a month.
"It was important for me once again to reaffirm the special relationship between our two countries, the commitment we made to Israel security that's based on our shared values, our shared history and the commonalities between our two peoples," Esper said. " I want to thank you for your personal efforts in the past few weeks, and I want to state again, how committed we are to Israel's qualitative military edge when it comes to defense sales, and our commitment to Israel security, which has been long-standing and guaranteed and ironclad."
Gantz thanked the secretary for the guarantees and praised the bipartisan consensus around aid to Israel. "I want to thank the American administration for supporting it," Gantz said. "Now that we are entering an era of good and positive normalization processes in the Middle East, which actually can face aggressive Iran over all the region. This … continued cooperation, I would say, is so very important."