WASHINGTON — The Trump admin­is­tra­tion for­mal­ly noti­fied Con­gress on Tues­day that it plans to sell 50 stealth F‑35 fight­er jets to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates as part of a broad­er arms deal worth $23 bil­lion aimed at deter­ring poten­tial threats from Iran despite con­cern in Israel.

Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo said he had autho­rized the sale in keep­ing with the administration’s Mid­dle East peace efforts. The noti­fi­ca­tion to law­mak­ers fol­lows the sign­ing of the Abra­ham Accords between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE, under which the Arab states have agreed to nor­mal­ize rela­tions with Israel.

“This is in recog­ni­tion of our deep­en­ing rela­tion­ship and the UAE’s need for advanced defense capa­bil­i­ties to deter and defend itself against height­ened threats from Iran,” Pom­peo said in a statement.

Israeli offi­cials have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed some con­cern about an F‑35 sale because it could affect the bal­ance of mil­i­tary pow­er in the region. But Pom­peo said it would be “ful­ly con­sis­tent” with the long­stand­ing pol­i­cy of main­tain­ing Israel’s qual­i­tive mil­i­tary advantage.

The sale, worth up to $23.37 bil­lion, includes 50 F‑35s, 18 advanced armed drone sys­tems and a pack­age of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions.

“The UAE’s his­toric agree­ment to nor­mal­ize rela­tions with Israel under the Abra­ham Accords offers a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly trans­form the region’s strate­gic land­scape,” Pom­peo said. “Our adver­saries, espe­cial­ly those in Iran, know this and will stop at noth­ing to dis­rupt this shared success.”

After agree­ing to nor­mal­ize rela­tions with Israel in August, Emi­rati offi­cials had said pur­chas­ing the F‑35s was among their main goals. At the time Israeli offi­cials denied they had agreed to the sale but lat­er dropped pub­lic objec­tions to it.

This sto­ry has been cor­rect­ed to put the total amount of the arms deal at $23 bil­lion in para­graph one.