Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has told an Israeli newspaper that the deal for the US to sell F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates was an integral part of last year’s Abraham Accords.

For months, Israeli, US and Emirati officials publicly denied that the arms deal was part of the negotiations that brought about the normalization deal between Israel and the UAE last year. But Trump officials acknowledged at the time that the agreement put Abu Dhabi in a better position to receive such advanced weaponry, and a source with direct knowledge of the talks told The Times of Israel that both the US and Israel knew that the arms deal was “very much part of the deal.