The Transatlantic Periscope is an interactive, multimedia tool that brings together expert commentary, high-quality media coverage, official policy documents, quantitative data, social media posts, and gray literature. It will provide on a monthly basis a summary of the most important news concerning the Greek-US relations. Below you will find an overview for January 2024.

The new year began with a visit by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Hania, Crete, on January 6, as part of his tour to Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean countries amid concerns about the expansion of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza’. There he had meetings with the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and other top officials. By the end of the month, after many delays, the US approved Greek F-35 and Turkish F-16 sales simultaneously. The latter was, inter alia, interpreted as a move that the US used as leverage in order to convince Ankara to drop its veto on NATO membership for Sweden.

On January 27, the Greek Prime Minister received a letter from the US Secretary of State informing him of the Department of State’s approval of the sale of up to 40 latest generation F-35 fighter jets to Greece. The US will also provide a very large package of equipment for free, which will include frigates, C-130 transports, armored tanks and vehicles. Moreover, the US Navy approved the Hellenic Navy’s request for co-production as regards the future Constellation-class frigate construction program, namely accepting that up to seven frigates will be built in Greece.

Athens appears to have also extracted a commitment from Washington that the green light on the USA’s F-16 fighter jet sale to Turkey will be conditional on the jets not being used in offensive actions against any member of the NATO alliance –perceived as an implicit reference to Greece. This condition is expected to be included in a letter from Antony Blinken to the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations and House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committees.

For this month, the relationship status is at 8,7/10, based on a survey completed by a group of experts on international relations.

More at: https://transatlanticperiscope.org/relationship/GR#