A U.S. Air Force flyover greeted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he visited with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, followed that evening by a star-studded, black-tie dinner. Yet neither the stately trappings nor the promise of an American military alliance pushed the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to make any concessions regarding Israel or human rights.

At Tuesday’s formal dinner, President Trump announced “that we are taking our military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally.”

The announcement came a day after Trump said he plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, explaining, “They want to buy them. They’ve been a great ally.”

Such a sale would mark a major policy change for the U.S., which has refused to sell F-35s to any Middle Eastern country except Israel. In 2008, Congress codified a requirement that any “proposed sale or export of defense articles … to any country in the Middle East other than Israel shall include a determination that the sale or export of the defense articles or defense services will not adversely affect Israel’s qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel.”

Because Israel’s population is so much smaller than that of its hostile neighbors, a “qualitative military edge” gives it “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat … while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means.”

Just what this “qualitative military edge” can achieve, Israel demonstrated last summer, when American-made F-35s became the backbone of its devastating airstrikes on Iran.

Now, the Saudi kingdom wants to buy 48 of the jets, enough to form two squadrons.

Several U.S. officials emphasized that the deal was not final, but that it had advanced through the Pentagon up to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, a Trump loyalist.

The law requires the Trump administration to officially notify Congress about the sale of such a major weapons system to Saudi Arabia. Congress could theoretically block the sale with a resolution of disapproval, but that would require a two-thirds majority to override the president’s inevitable veto, which seems highly unlikely while both chambers are controlled by the president’s own party. (The fact that congressional disapproval of executive actions requires the signature of the chief executive constitutes a major structural flaw in the current balance of power among the three branches of government.) According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress has never successfully blocked a proposed arms sale in this way.

“You can’t give Saudi Arabia the U.S.’s most advanced fighter and have it not affect Israel’s qualitative military edge, which [the] law requires Washington to maintain,” argued Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “The administration owes Congress answers on what additional steps it plans to take to maintain Israel’s relative edge.”

For its part, Israel did not formally oppose the sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia, but it strongly suggested to Trump “that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel.” Israel is less concerned about Saudi Arabia’s potential use of the plane — clearly pointed at Iran — than about setting a precedent that would allow more hostile nations, such as Turkey, to acquire their own. “Our air force is our insurance policy. It is our long arm but also our quickest and most effective response to most situations,” said Eyal Hulata, former head of Israel’s National Security Council.

However, the meeting between Trump and bin Salman did not yield a breakthrough on the normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations. Trump did raise the prospect of the Saudi kingdom joining the Abraham Accords, but bin Salman maintained his nation’s longstanding position “that we secure a clear path of two-state solution” first, he insisted. While bin Salman may moderate Saudi policy at some future date, he has been reluctant to do so as long as his aged father, the king, lives on.

Instead, bin Salman pledged to increase the foreign investment of Saudi wealth in the U.S. economy from $600 billion to “almost $1 trillion,” which nearly matches their entire sovereign wealth fund.

Bin Salman also left without securing a deal to obtain American nuclear energy technology, which the Saudis have pressed for since the Obama administration.

Thus, neither side got everything they wanted, but the Saudi prince certainly benefited more from the visit.

Bin Salman gained international notoriety in 2018 after dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who contracted for The Washington Post at the time, was lured inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey and beaten to death. Although bin Salman denied any knowledge of the murder, American intelligence agencies during the first Trump administration concluded that he ordered or at least approved of the killing.

The allegations are consistent with the U.S. State Department’s assessment of domestic conditions in Saudi Arabia, which include “disappearances,” extrajudicial killings, and a total lack of religious freedom. Throughout our decades-long relationship with the Saudi government, American presidents have never seriously pressed for the oil-rich country to reform its human rights record.

The Khashoggi affair prompted the incoming Biden administration to treat bin Salman as something of a pariah (in favor of Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran). Now, bin Salman is not only back in Washington’s good graces but has obtained the coveted designation of “Major Non-NATO Ally.” He may even get some F-35s thrown into the bargain.