A Yemeni inspects the damage caused by a January 18, 2022 Saudi-led airstrike on the home of a high-ranking Houthi military official in Yemen's capital of Sanaa. (Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
Outrage as
Biden Reportedly Considers Lifting Ban on 'Offensive' Arms Sales to Saudi
Arabia
"Saudi
Arabia and the UAE are fabulously wealthy oil states and do not need any
aid," noted one progressive. "U.S. weapons transfers are intended to
throw our money to American arms corporations."
July 11, 2022
"Biden is
considering resuming offensive weapon sales to one of the most brutal dictators
on the planet: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS."
According to Reuters, the U.S.
administration has come under pressure from Saudi officials to end its policy
of selling only defensive arms to the kingdom, which Biden is scheduled to
visit later this week as part of a wider Middle East tour with stops in Israel
and the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.
"Biden is
headed to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week, where he will sing the praises of
an apartheid government and a council of oil dictators," tweeted Sunjeev Bery, executive
director of Freedom Forward, which seeks to end U.S. support for dictatorships.
"And now,
Biden is considering resuming offensive weapon sales to one of the most brutal
dictators on the planet: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS," he added, a
reference to de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman.
Jasmine
Krotkov, a Democratic candidate for the Montana House of Representatives, tweeted that "Saudi Arabia and
the UAE are fabulously wealthy oil states and do not need any aid from the
U.S."
"U.S.
weapons transfers are intended to throw our money to American arms
corporations," she added.
People
familiar with the matter told Reuters that any final decision
on a Biden administration arms policy shift depends upon whether the Saudis
make progress toward ending the war in neighboring Yemen:
The internal U.S. deliberations are informal and at an early
stage, with no decision imminent, two sources said, and a U.S. official
told Reuters there were no discussions on offensive weapons
under way with the Saudis "at this time."
But as Biden prepares for a diplomatically sensitive trip, he
has signaled that he is looking to reset strained relations with Saudi Arabia
at a time when he wants increased Gulf oil supplies along with closer Arab
security ties with Israel to counter Iran.
A week after
taking office in January 2021, Biden—who while campaigning for president vowed to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah"—temporarily froze arms sales to the
kingdom and the United Arab Emirates pending a review of weapons deals with
repressive regimes approved during the presidency of Donald Trump. The
following month, the president announced his administration would
end U.S. support for "offensive operations" in the Saudi-led war on
Yemen.
However, Biden
was accused of breaking his promise following his administration's approval of a $500 million
maintenance and support services contract for Saudi military helicopters and a
$650 million air-to-air missile sale to the Royal Saudi Air
Force, whose airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians.
As Juan
Cole notes at Informed Comment:
Since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and their allies
launched a war on Yemen in 2015, some quarter of a million people have
been killed (most by disease and hunger
caused by the war), and half the population has been made food insecure. Of those
killed in air strikes, about 17,000 are known to have been civilian
non-combatants, according to the U.N.
In late January of this year alone, Saudi and UAE fighter-jets,
supplied by the U.S., hit three primarily civilian sites, including a hospital
and a Houthi a telecommunications corporation. The strikes killed 80 civilians and caused 156
injuries. And that was just one two-week period.
Last month,
the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report acknowledging
difficulties in determining whether Saudi forces are using U.S.-supplied
weapons in a "defensive" manner.
Jason Bair,
GAO's director of international affairs and trade, told the Washington Post that
while U.S. State Department officials "told us that they attempt to
distinguish between 'offensive' and 'defensive' weapons, they have no specific
definitions of 'offensive' and 'defensive.'"
"Without
clear definitions of 'offensive' and 'defensive' weapons, it can be difficult
for the State Department to implement the president's wishes" to end
offensive arms sales, Bair noted, adding that "State's assessment is based
on the intended use of the weapons, which may or may not match the actual
use."
Biden is
defending his renewed engagement with the Saudis.
In an opinion piece published Saturday in
the Washington Post, the president acknowledged that "there
are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia" before
explaining why he is seeking closer engagement with one of the most repressive governments on the planet
and the perpetrator of what has been widely called the
world's worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
"As
president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to
counter Russia's aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to
outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of
the world," Biden wrote.
"To do
these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those
outcomes," he explained. "Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I
meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic
partnership going forward that's based on mutual interests and
responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values."
Since the end
of World War II, the United States has supported most right-wing
dictatorships around the world in service of U.S. government and business
interests.
Biden's op-ed
points to U.S. sanctions imposed on members of the elite Saudi "Tiger
Squad" involved in the grisly October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
as well as visa bans targeting scores of Saudis "involved
in harassing dissidents."
However, the
piece does not mention bin Salman, who according to American intelligence
agencies ordered the murder of Khashoggi—a legal U.S. resident—with no punitive action by the Biden
administration. Nor does it mention Saudi Arabia's abysmal human rights record or alleged involvement in the September
11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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