US set to lift ban on offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia – report
Move widely seen as part of a larger set of agreements on nuclear energy, security and defense cooperation, tied to long-sought Israel-Saudi normalization deal
The United States is expected to lift a ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, potentially in the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Washington has already signaled to Saudi Arabia that it was prepared to lift the ban, the newspaper reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Soon after taking office in 2021, US President Joe Biden toughened the country’s stance over Saudi Arabia’s campaign against the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, which has inflicted heavy civilian casualties.
The Biden administration initially removed the Houthis from the terror watch list in 2021, amid concern that the designation was hampering efforts to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
In January 2024, however, the administration reversed that decision, as Houthis attacked international merchant ships in the Red Sea in the name of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The US has also sought to penalize Riyadh over its record of human rights violations, in particular the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist and political dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi Arabia, the biggest US arms customer, has chafed under those restrictions, which froze the kind of weapons sales that previous US administrations had provided for decades.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the US and Saudi Arabia were very close to concluding a set of agreements on nuclear energy, security and defense cooperation, the bilateral component of a wider normalization deal between Riyadh and Israel.
Prospects for a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia may be dependent on Israel’s willingness to accept Palestinian statehood as a long-term goal and embark on some pathway to get there, a move that Prime Minister Netanyahu has resisted.
But this has not stopped the US from trying to advance the initiative. It was a top agenda item during a recent meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Some Biden officials have suggested that the US is running out of time to secure a deal before the 2024 presidential election and that the administration is nearing a point where it will simply choose to publicly present the diplomatic initiative and force Netanyahu to make a decision.
An agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia was widely expected last year, until the Palestinian terror group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, triggering a war between Israel and Hamas that is still ongoing.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
