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Final week, an investigation by The Intercept revealed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stiffed the Protection Division on a invoice for assist of a Saudi-led conflict in Yemen that killed a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals and sparked a humanitarian disaster. For months — as much as and since publication — the Pentagon has ducked The Intercept’s requests for touch upon the unpaid invoice.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in an announcement to The Intercept, excoriated the dominion, its chief Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the Pentagon in response to the findings.
“Yemen’s kids will develop up realizing Saudi Arabia’s brutal conflict that prompted a lot slaughter and hunger was made attainable with American assist. Now, the billionaire crown prince apparently is not going to reimburse America’s taxpayers for refueling his warplanes,” Paul instructed The Intercept. “Saudi Arabia’s delinquency, and our authorities’s smug lack of transparency, additional demonstrates that America’s servility to this autocratic regime is a nationwide shame.”
The senator has been a longtime critic of U.S. arms gross sales to Saudi Arabia as a result of kingdom’s dismal document on human rights. In 2019, Paul joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and a bipartisan group of lawmakers imploring President Donald Trump to finish U.S. assist of the Saudi conflict in Yemen. Late final 12 months, Paul additionally tried to dam the sale of refined intelligence and army communications applied sciences to Saudi Arabia.
Regardless of the unpaid debt of $15 million — the remaining steadiness of a $300 million invoice for aerial refueling missions which the Pentagon has repeatedly tried to gather — the Biden administration just lately lifted its ban on promoting offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, authorizing an preliminary cargo of air-to-ground munitions to the dominion. The restriction didn’t apply to gross sales of so-called defensive arms and army companies. These gross sales have amounted to virtually $10 billion over the previous 4 years.
The Biden administration’s embrace of Saudi Arabia comes as new questions have been raised regarding the kingdom’s function within the terrorist assaults that killed almost 3,000 individuals on 9/11.
In 2021, the Biden administration imposed the offensive weapons ban as a result of conflict in Yemen which instantly or not directly killed at the least 377,000 individuals, together with hundreds of civilians slain in Saudi-coalition airstrikes. Regardless of a deescalation within the battle following a 2022 truce, 18.2 million individuals, greater than half of Yemen’s inhabitants, nonetheless require humanitarian help.
A 2022 Authorities Accountability Workplace report famous that between March 2015 and August 2021, the United Nations estimated that coalition airstrikes in Yemen killed or injured greater than 18,000 civilians. The GAO additionally decided that the Pentagon and the State Division failed to research the function of U.S.-provided army assist in inflicting these casualties.
When the administration introduced, earlier this month, that it was dropping its ban on gross sales of offensive arms to Saudi Arabia and authorizing an preliminary cargo of air-to-ground munitions, it additionally mentioned it could take into account extra new transfers on a “case-by-case foundation,” in accordance with senior administration officers.
For months, The Intercept has contacted the Pentagon to establish if Saudi Arabia has paid any extra portion of its remaining aerial refueling invoice. Return receipts present that the questions had been learn thrice by Pentagon officers in April and Could. Regardless of dozens of follow-up messages in current months, the Protection Division has by no means responded to The Intercept’s questions.
On August 10, the State Division acknowledged receipt of The Intercept’s questions concerning the causes for the resumption of weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia however didn’t reply to repeated follow-ups. A message despatched to Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington, D.C., looking for an interview additionally obtained no response.
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