RIYADH (Dispatches) – The United States is expected to lift a ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, potentially in the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Washington has already signaled to Saudi Arabia that it was prepared to lift the ban, the newspaper reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Soon after taking office in 2021, Biden adopted a tougher stance over Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, which has inflicted heavy civilian casualties, and over Riyadh’s human rights record, in particular the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist and political opponent Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi Arabia, the biggest U.S. arms customer, has chafed under those restrictions, which froze the kind of weapons sales that previous U.S. administrations had provided for decades.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were very close to concluding a set of agreements on nuclear energy, security and military cooperation, the bilateral component of a wider normalization deal with Riyadh and the Zionist regime.
However, lifting the ban on offensive weapons sales were not directly linked to these talks, FT said.
The White House and Saudi Arabia’s government communication office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the war on Yemen to restore power to the impoverished country’s Western- and Riyadh-allied government.
The war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Yemenis and turned the entire country into the site of what the United Nations has described as the one of world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The Western governments further extended their political and logistical support to Riyadh in their failed bid to restore power in Yemen to the former Saudi-installed government.