WASHINGTON (Al Jazeera) – The U.S. State Department has approved Washington’s latest raft of proposed weapons sales to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) preliminarily approved for deals – if they are not blocked by U.S. Congress.
The sales come at a time as the UAE has seen a string of retaliatory attacks by the Yemeni forces.
The United States has said it will continue to support the military capabilities of its allies in the region – notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE – and has emphasized arms sales as one avenue for that support.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, backed by the United States and European powers, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
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 there.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced in February last year that the U.S. was ending support for offensive operations by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and all “relevant” arms sales.
Advocates and legislators have since decried the approval of a $650mn sale of air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia in November as undermining that pledge.
The most recently approved sales to Saudi Arabia include 31 communication and navigation terminals at a cost of $23.7mn to upgrade the regime’s missile system, according to the Pentagon.
The State Department approved the UAE to buy $65mn worth of spare parts for its Homing All the Way Killer (HAWK), Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target (PATRIOT), and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems.