The United States announced on Monday (12) that it will resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, which had been suspended since 2021. Since then, Washington had only been selling defensive systems to Riyadh.
The suspension of offensive arms sales had been imposed in the first year of Democrat Joe Biden’s administration due to concerns about human rights violations by Saudi Arabia in the civil war in Yemen, where the kingdom has fought a proxy conflict against Iran, which supports the Houthi rebels. A ceasefire has been in place since April 2022.
According to CNN, in a press conference, US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel claimed that Saudi Arabia “has implemented a number of improvements in civilian harm mitigation procedures, including modernizing its strike planning processes to align with US processes and continuing to participate in a series of US-led joint training and exercises.”
Patel denied at the news conference that the lifting of the suspension was related to efforts to establish diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which had been under discussion before the current Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip but have since cooled.
“Saudi Arabia remains a close strategic partner of the United States and we look forward to strengthening that partnership,” the spokesperson said.
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