Washington Wouldn’t Stop Arms Sales to Riyadh :US President
He defended a $110 billion arms deal he announced with Riyadh last year, insisting that the deal was worth 450,000 jobs inside the United States.
The American leader had called on Riyadh to increase its military spending, with an eye on more weapons sale to the “rich” kingdom.
Last year, the US president signed the largest arms deal in history with Saudi Arabia despite warnings that he could be accused of being complicit in the regime’s war crimes in Yemen. During visit to Riyadh in May 2017, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy $US110 billion of US weapons and signed “investment” deals worth billions more.
The kingdom has one of the highest rates of spending on its military in the world, which stood at 10.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2017, according to World Bank data.
Before his presidency, Trump described Saudi Arabia as “a milk cow” which would be slaughtered when its milk runs out.
In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.
Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.
More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
However, Saudi Arabia relies heavily on the US in its war on Yemen. Washington has deployed a commando force on the Arab kingdom’s border with Yemen to help destroy arms belonging to Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement. Washington has also provided logistical support and aerial refueling.
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