It’s actually a very telling carve-out, and I have no idea what it’s doing so far down in the article. It should have been front and center.

The only two logical conclusions I can see are:

• Israel is so sharp with their negotiation that they spotted and fought for something that it just didn’t occur to anyone else would be something worth worrying about (possible, I guess.)
• We already know that Israel is fucked without us, F-35s or no, so there’s no particular reason we would need to separately ensure that their F-35s are fucked without us.

I very much suspect that it’s the second one. Which indicates that the lock-in was an intentional decision, and one that actually would make quite a bit of sense on reflection.