Dems Unveil Bill Blocking US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

A pair of congressional Democrats on Tuesday officially introduced their promised proposal to immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for a year.

The legislation, spearheaded by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), follows the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, or OPEC+, agreeing to slash oil production to boost prices.

U.S. President Joe Biden and other critics of the move have framed it as Saudi Arabia siding with Russia several months into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly and dangerous invasion of Ukraine—a position that the bill’s sponsors reiterated on Tuesday.

“Saudi Arabia’s disastrous decision to slash oil production by two million barrels a day makes it clear that Riyadh is seeking to harm the U.S. and reaffirms the need to reassess the U.S.-Saudi relationship,” declared Khanna.

The legislative proposal comes over seven years into the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which had created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Earlier this month, negotiators failed to extend a truce that began in April.

“There is no reason for the U.S. to kowtow to a regime that has massacred countless civilians in Yemen, hacked to death a Washington-based journalist, and is now extorting Americans at the pump,” Khanna said, referencing the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which the U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, had ordered.

“My bill with Sen. Blumenthal to halt U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia will force MBS to reconsider his efforts to jack up global oil prices,” the congressman continued. “There must be consequences for fleecing the American people in order to support Putin’s unconscionable war.”

Blumenthal similarly said that “this simple yet urgent measure would halt U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia after their deeply offensive, destructive blunder: siding with Russia at this historic moment.”

Long before the recent OPEC+ decision, peace groups and some progressives in Congress were calling for an end to U.S. complicity in the Saudi coalition’s war. While Biden pledged last year to cut off support for offensive operations in Yemen, he has come under fire for all that he’s allowed to continue, including arms sales, and for his summer meeting—and fist bump—with MBS.

The new bill comes after Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) vowed Monday to block all future U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia as backlash over the OPEC+ decision.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.