WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The U.S. State Department approved its first major arms sale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under U.S. President Joe Biden with the sale of 280 air-to-air missiles valued at up to $650 million, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
While Saudi Arabia is an important partner in the Middle East, U.S. lawmakers have purportedly criticized Riyadh for its war on Yemen, a conflict considered one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
The Pentagon notified Congress of the sale on Thursday. If approved, the deal would be the first sale to Saudi Arabia since the Biden administration adopted a policy of selling only defensive weapons to the Persian Gulf ally.
The State Department had approved the sale on Oct. 26, a spokesperson said, adding that the air-to-air missile sale comes after “an increase in cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia over the past year.”
Yemeni missiles have repeatedly hit vital energy and other strategic targets deep inside the kingdom. Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
Raytheon Technologies makes the missiles.
The sale “is fully consistent with the administration’s pledge to lead with diplomacy to end the conflict in Yemen,” the State Department spokesperson claimed in a statement.
After the Trump administration’s friendly relationship with Riyadh, the Biden administration initially claimed that it had recalculated its approach to Saudi Arabia, a country with which it has severe human rights concerns but which is also one of Washington’s closest U.S. allies.
The package would include 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), 596 LAU-128 Missile Rail Launchers (MRL) along with containers and support equipment, spare parts, U.S. Government and contractor engineering and technical support.
Despite approval by the State Department, the notification did not indicate that a contract has been signed or that negotiations have concluded.
Marianne Williamson, a candidate in last year’s presidential election, slammed the deal late on Thursday, saying it had “nothing to do with making the world a better place and everything to do with fueling our defense economy.”

“America’s economy should not be built around merchandising death,” she wrote on Twitter.
Former President Donald Trump was heavily criticized by rights groups and U.S. lawmakers for continuing to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of arms to Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump vetoed multiple attempts to block arms sales to the kingdom and end support for the war in Yemen.
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.