{"id":4791,"date":"2016-08-22T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=4791"},"modified":"2016-08-19T15:12:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T20:12:28","slug":"with-yemeni-casualties-rising-gop-senator-looks-to-block-big-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/with-yemeni-casualties-rising-gop-senator-looks-to-block-big-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia\/","title":{"rendered":"With Yemeni Casualties Rising, GOP Senator Looks to Block Big Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published on Foreign Policy<\/a> on Aug. 11, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

By John Hudson<\/p>\n

\"destroyed-house-sanaa-yemen-saudi-arabia-300x156Citing concerns over Saudi Arabia\u2019s human rights record, Republican Senator Rand Paul says he\u2019s looking for ways to\u00a0stop a $1.15 billion weapons deal with Riyadh that would include the sale of 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored vehicles, and other military equipment.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s pledge comes as Saudi Arabia resumed its bombardment of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa following the collapse of peace talks in Kuwait between representatives of the government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will work with a bipartisan coalition to explore forcing a vote on blocking this sale,\u201d Paul told Foreign Policy in a statement. \u201cSaudi Arabia is an unreliable ally with a poor human rights record. We should not rush to sell them advanced arms and promote an arms race in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humanitarian organizations are criticizing\u00a0the proposed weapons sale as a setback for efforts to bring pressure on Riyadh to throttle back its military campaign. The U.N. estimates that at least 6,400 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict while more than 2.8 million have been displaced from their homes.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, also expressed concern about the sale, noting the high civilian casualty rate in Yemen and Riyadh\u2019s shrinking role in the military campaign against the Islamic State. \u201cI\u2019d like to see them commit to rejoin that fight as part of major new military sales,\u201d Murphy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Still, stopping the deal is going to be an uphill battle. The main beneficiary of the deal is General Dynamics Land Systems, according to a statement by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The firm is a subsidiary of General Dynamics, a massive defense contractor that wields significant clout on Capitol Hill. That could make it hard for Paul to find the allies he would need in the House and Senate to permanently block the sale.<\/p>\n

The State Department defended the proposed deal, saying it did not amount to an endorsement of Saudi Arabia\u2019s activities in Yemen. \u201cThis proposed sale is aimed toward strengthening Saudi Arabia\u2019s long-term defense capabilities,\u201d David McKeeby, an official at the department\u2019s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, told Foreign Policy. \u201cIf finalized, this proposed sale will require major refurbishment of some existing tanks, and manufacturing of the rest over the course of several years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Human rights groups, by contrast, say the\u00a0move\u00a0sends the wrong message to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international community must go \u2018all in\u2019 on a peace agreement,\u201d said Scott Paul, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America. \u201cA sale of major arms to Saudi Arabia signals the opposite \u2014 that the U.S. is instead all-in on a senseless war that has created one of the world\u2019s largest humanitarian emergencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the fighting resumed in Yemen this week, local medics told Reuters that 14 civilians were killed after Saudi-led air strikes struck a potato chip factory in Sanaa\u2019s Nahda district. On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said it intercepted two ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels toward its cities Abha and Khamis Mushait, the Associated Press reported. It said the missiles did not cause any damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published on Foreign Policy on Aug. 11, 2016. By John Hudson Citing concerns over Saudi Arabia\u2019s human rights record, Republican Senator Rand Paul says he\u2019s looking for ways to\u00a0stop a $1.15 billion weapons deal with Riyadh that would include the sale of 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored vehicles, and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"With Yemeni Casualties Rising, GOP Senator Looks to Block Big Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4793,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791\/revisions\/4793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}