Wheat/Corn sold to PAF with F-16 money OR "withheld" jets used by US Navy/USAF type stories: That's not quite true, because..
Source:
Of the $658 million PAF was reimbursed $483.9 million. $60 million of wheat and $80million to be compensated. No additional F-16s coming PAFs way from Presseler Amendment era. LOL
But this hard engrained rhetoric of
wheat-4-jets or
pending/withheld-vipers doesn't get old.
Not exactly.
If we’re clearing up myths, let’s at least clear up the
actual facts:
There was no corn shipments involved at all.
The partial compensation the US provided was mainly through soybean deliveries — and even then, the compensation was never fully settled.
Yes, PAF got $483.9 million back out of the $658 million.
But the remaining amount wasn’t wrapped up in some tidy “$60M wheat + $80M adjustments” package. It was a messy soybean-based compensation arrangement that never reached the full amount owed.
Second, nowhere did I claim that PAF is going to receive the 14 withheld F-16s.
What I said was that PAF can explore the same kinds of options it had previously pursued — such as the Pressler-era impounded aircraft or the Iraqi F-16s via barter-style arrangements. These were historical precedents, not promises or pending deliveries.
And as for the classic “no jets withheld / no pending vipers” narrative — the freeze was real, the aircraft
were impounded, and the compensation dragged on for years. That’s why these stories aren’t exactly folklore.
But hey, the legend of
wheat-for-jets is definitely funnier than the actual story of
soybean diplomacy, so I get why people keep using it.
