The Saudis Won’t Pay Their Gas Bill

The Saudi Royal Household is reportedly value greater than $1.4 trillion, however for a number of years, the Pentagon has been chasing the dominion for $15 million it owes for American help throughout the Saudi struggle in Yemen. For months, the Protection Division has ducked The Intercept’s questions on Saudi Arabia welching on its debt.

Regardless of the unpaid debt, the Biden administration introduced final Friday that it’s lifting a ban on promoting offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, authorizing an preliminary cargo of air-to-ground munitions to the Gulf kingdom. The ban had been in place for the previous three years as a response to the heavy civilian casualties of the nation’s marketing campaign in Yemen however didn’t apply to gross sales of so-called defensive arms and army providers. These gross sales have amounted to nearly $10 billion over the previous 4 years.

The excellent steadiness dates from an operation carried out between March 2015 and November 2018. The Pentagon spent about $300 million to fly aerial refueling missions to assist the warplanes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as these nations waged their struggle to shore up the federal government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by Iran-backed Houthi rebels. America additionally offered the Saudi army and its allies weapons, fight coaching, and different “logistical and intelligence assist.”

A Pentagon report obtained solely by The Intercept finds that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stiffed the USA on its excellent gasoline invoice. After the dominion and the United Arab Emirates paid off a big portion of the debt in 2021 and 2022, Saudi Arabia has paid simply over $950,000 on a years-old steadiness that, as of late final 12 months, totaled $15.1 million.

Based on the report, which was obtained through the Freedom of Data Act, representatives of the Protection Logistics Company and U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. army exercise within the Center East, traveled to Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, in March 2022 to fulfill with the Saudi Ministry of Finance and Saudi air pressure brass. “At the moment, the Saudi MOF and the RSAF management expressed a willingness to pay remaining gasoline debt owed to DLA Vitality by December 2022,” reads the report. When U.S. officers once more met with their counterparts, greater than a 12 months later, and raised the difficulty of the debt, Saudi officers mentioned they have been “not conscious of the excellent debt and requested some extra time to analyze the difficulty.” Late final 12 months, in accordance with the report, the debt was nonetheless unpaid.

For months, The Intercept has contacted the Pentagon to establish if Saudi Arabia has paid any extra portion of the cash owed. Return receipts present that the questions have been learn 3 times by Pentagon officers in April and Might. Regardless of dozens of follow-up messages in current months, the Workplace of the Secretary of Protection has by no means responded to The Intercept’s questions. At this similar time, the Biden administration has been brokering billions of {dollars} in arms offers with the dominion main as much as its lifting of the offensive weapons ban final week — a part of a rapprochement coverage aimed toward strengthening ties with Persian Gulf autocracies within the face of the Gaza struggle and battles with Iranian proxies, in addition to curbing Russian and Chinese language affect within the Center East.

“The truth that the Pentagon received’t tackle the difficulty is regarding,” mentioned Nancy Okail, the president and CEO of the Middle for Worldwide Coverage, a Washington-based assume tank. “The quantity owed — $15 million — is just not the difficulty. What is critical is the shortage of transparency and accountability. That is symptomatic of the bigger downside of opacity surrounding arms offers and protection spending on the subject of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

The U.S.-backed Saudi-led struggle in Yemen, which deescalated following a 2022 truce, has straight or not directly killed not less than 377,000 folks, together with 1000’s of civilians slain in Saudi-coalition air strikes. A 2022 investigation by the Washington Submit and Safety Pressure Monitor at Columbia Regulation College’s Human Rights Institute discovered {that a} substantial portion of Saudi coalition air raids have been carried out by jets developed, maintained, and bought by U.S. firms, and by pilots who have been educated by the U.S. army. That very same 12 months, a 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 analyze the function of U.S.-provided army assist in inflicting these casualties.

“The Saudi-led coalition has recklessly launched strikes killing almost 15,000 harmless civilians and U.S.-origin weapons have been reportedly used in a variety of these strikes, together with a 2018 strike on a faculty bus that killed 40 kids,” a bipartisan group of U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Mike Lee, R-Utah — introduced in 2022. “Between 2015 by way of 2020, the U.S. offered greater than $54.2 billion in protection articles and protection providers to the Saudi and Emirati governments, along with almost $650 million in army coaching.”

In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and critic of the struggle in Yemen who lived in Virginia and was a columnist for the Washington Submit, was murdered and dismembered on the orders of Saudi chief Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, generally known as MBS. Then President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration by no means wavered of their assist for MBS, plying the Saudi regime with arms, even within the wake of the worldwide outcry over Khashoggi’s killing. Throughout his 2020 presidential election marketing campaign, candidate Joe Biden excoriated the Saudis, vowing that, if elected, they might “pay the value” and he would “make them in reality the pariah that they’re.” There may be “little or no social redeeming worth within the current authorities in Saudi Arabia,” Biden mentioned.

In 2021, the Biden administration imposed a ban on gross sales of sure sorts of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, citing the heavy civilian casualties in Yemen, however the brand new president shortly modified his tune. Biden provided MBS heat greetings once they met in 2022 and 2023 and, since taking workplace, has offered the dominion with greater than $9 billion in offers for arms and different safety help.

“The Biden administration’s reversal and eventual full embrace of MBS solidified his rehabilitation throughout the worldwide neighborhood following the grotesque homicide of Jamal Khashoggi,” mentioned Seth Binder of the Washington-based Center East Democracy Middle. “The outcome has been to raise MBS as untouchable and greenlight his ruthless repression.”

Final Friday, when the administration introduced 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 think about extra new transfers on a “case-by-case foundation,” in accordance with senior administration officers. 

The Pentagon failed to reply to a request for remark from The Intercept in regards to the resumption of offensive arms gross sales to Saudi Arabia. The State Division acknowledged receipt of The Intercept’s questions in regards to the causes for the resumption of such weapons transfers however didn’t reply additional.

“The Biden administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has been a giant disappointment. Biden ran a presidential marketing campaign trying to differentiate himself from Trump and pledged ‘no extra clean checks to dictators,’” mentioned Middle for Worldwide Coverage’s Okail. “However over the previous 4 years, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations. They’ve solid a relationship — primarily arms offers — aimed toward boxing out China and locking Saudi Arabia into the U.S. orbit for a few years.”