Amid its continued Aggression against Yemen, Saudi Regime Buys Biden’s Silence for $ 650 Million
The US received the price. This is the reality of the situation revealed by the approval of the first major arms deal for Saudi Arabia during the era of President Joe Biden by selling 280 air-to-air missiles at a value of up to 650 million dollars, despite the slogans he adopted to reconsider policies towards Saudi Arabia.
Since the US President Biden took office, he has launched resounding slogans about reformulating relations with Saudi Arabia, and he had promised before his election to make Saudi leaders “pay the price” for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but it seems that these promises were just a tool to pressure Saudi Arabia to continue the policy of “milking” which was used by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
How can it be imagined that the US will giving up profits in order to defend human rights, while it is through history and present looting the country’s wealth, such as in Syria, Afghanistan and other countries, whether directly or indirectly, in order to earn more money for the benefit of its administration, ignoring the violations of human rights
Therefore, the United States, which is the largest exporter of arms and military equipment in the world, and acquires more than a third of the world’s weapons, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute “SIPRI”, will not dispense with its largest importers, as the statement showed that the Saudi regime was the largest importer of arms and military equipment from the United States, which amounted between 2016 and 2020 to about $12.6 billion.
The US State Department has approved its first major arms sale to Saudi Arabia under US President Joe Biden with the sale of 280 air-to-air missiles valued at as much as $650 million. On Thursday, the Pentagon notified Congress of the sale which the State Department had approved on Oct. 26.
In addition to 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), the package would also include 596 LAU-128 Missile Rail Launchers (MRL) along with containers and support equipment, spare parts, US Government and contractor engineering and technical support.
This comes amid harsh criticism against Saudi Arabia for its military onslaught on Yemen as the war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases.
The US State Department has justified the sale, which appears to contradict Biden’s commitment to end support for the military coalition in Yemen, by emphasizing that these missiles will protect American lives and are in line with the Biden administration’s pledge to embark on diplomacy to end the war in Yemen, and that it ensures that Saudi Arabia has the means to defend itself from the Yemeni attacks.
Member of the Yemeni Supreme Political Council, Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, considered that the new American arms deal if approved is a flagrant contradiction between Biden’s commitment to peace in Yemen and support for the aggression, in addition to being evidence of the lack of seriousness and credibility of Biden and his administration in stopping its aggression with its allies on Yemen.