US Senate Votes to Block $8 Billion in Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia as Trump Pledges Veto
The Senate voted Thursday to block the Trump
administration from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, launching a new
challenge to President Donald Trump’s steadfast alliance with the
country amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
Trump
has promised to veto the legislation, which passed 53-45. The White
House said stopping the sales “would send a message that the United
States is abandoning its partners and allies at the very moment when
threats to them are increasing.”
The
Senate will hold two more votes Thursday on measures to stop the arms
sales, which also are expected to pass. While the resolutions are also
likely to be approved by the House, supporters of the measures are well
short of having enough support to overcome Trump’s threatened veto.
The
votes came against the backdrop of heightened U.S. tensions with Iran,
spurred by the Islamic Republic’s downing of a U.S. drone. Trump
declared Thursday that “Iran made a very big mistake,” and congressional
leaders received a closed-door briefing on the situation at the
Capitol.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
cited threats from Iran when declaring an emergency to approve the
weapons sales in May. The Saudis have recently faced a number of attacks
from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“To
reject these sales at this time and under these circumstances is to
reward recent Iranian aggression and to encourage further Iranian
escalation,” said Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the Republican chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Risch added that blocking the
sale would also “encourage miscalculation on the part of Iranians, which
will be disastrous.”
The $8 billion arms sale included precision guided munitions, other bombs and ammunition and aircraft maintenance support.
Opposition
in Congress to closer U.S. Saudi ties escalated after the killing last
year of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the kingdom.
But a small group of lawmakers has been voicing concern about the
Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen for years.
Sen.
Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, said the war in Yemen was one reason for his
opposition to the arms sales.
“These are
bombs that we know have killed thousands of civilians in Yemen, patients
in hospitals, children on school buses,” Menendez said.
The
conflict has left millions on the brink of starvation, and Menendez
called the humanitarian situation in Yemen “an incomprehensible moral
tragedy.”