The State Department confirmed on Monday that the US will resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, ending a suspension put in place at the beginning of the Biden administration over concerns about human rights violations in the war in Yemen.
“As part of this policy, our administration froze the sale of certain classes of offensive weapons, while also maintaining sales of systems to the kingdom required to defend itself from attack,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a news briefing, according to CNN.
“We also always made clear that the freeze on certain classes of weapons was conditional, and it was based on Saudi Arabia’s policy towards Yemen and efforts to improve civilian harm mitigation measures,” added Patel.
“The Saudis since that time have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours, which means returning these cases through regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation,” he said.
A State Department official said the ban is being lifted on the sale of certain types of air-to-ground munitions, and that they “will consider new transfers on a typical case-by-case basis consistent with the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy.”
The ban was imposed in 2021 amid concerns about the toll of the Saudi-led war against the Houthis in Yemen. The fighting was brought to an end by a UN-mediated truce in the spring of 2022. That truce has held beyond its official expiration – even as the Houthis have ratcheted up their aggression in the Red Sea in purported response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Asked why it took so long to lift the freeze on offensive arms sales, Patel said, “These things are processes, they take time.”
“This policy was combined with intensive diplomacy, including direct diplomacy with the Saudis on a path to winding down the war,” he said, adding that since the UN mediation, “there has not been a single Saudi air strike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped.”
“We’ve also seen and been able to assess at a closer detail that Saudi Arabia has implemented a number of improvements in civilian harm mitigation procedures, including modernizing its strike planning processes to align with US processes and continuing to participate in a number of US-led trainings and joint exercises,” Patel said.