The Saudi Royal Family is reportedly worth more than $1.4 trillion, but for several years, the Pentagon has been chasing the kingdom for $15 million it owes for American assistance during the Saudi war in Yemen. For months, the Defense Department has ducked The Intercept’s questions about Saudi Arabia welching on its debt.
Despite the unpaid debt, the Biden administration announced last Friday that it is lifting a ban on selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, authorizing an initial shipment of air-to-ground munitions to the Gulf kingdom. The ban had been in place for the past three years as a response to the heavy civilian casualties of the country’s campaign in Yemen but did not apply to sales of so-called defensive arms and military services. Those sales have amounted to almost $10 billion over the past four years.
The outstanding balance dates from an operation carried out between March 2015 and November 2018. The Pentagon spent about $300 million to fly aerial refueling missions to support the warplanes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as those nations waged their war to shore up the government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by Iran-backed Houthi rebels. America also provided the Saudi military and its allies weapons, combat training, and other “logistical and intelligence support.”
A Pentagon report obtained exclusively by The Intercept finds that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stiffed the United States on its outstanding fuel bill. After the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates paid off a large portion of the debt in 2021 and 2022, Saudi Arabia has paid just over $950,000 on a years-old balance that, as of late last year, totaled $15.1 million.
According to the report, which was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, representatives of the Defense Logistics Agency and U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military activity in the Middle East, traveled to Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, in March 2022 to meet with the Saudi Ministry of Finance and Saudi air force brass. “At that time, the Saudi MOF and the RSAF leadership expressed a willingness to pay remaining fuel debt owed to DLA Energy by December 2022,” reads the report. When U.S. officials again met with their counterparts, more than a year later, and raised the issue of the debt, Saudi officials said they were “not aware of the outstanding debt and requested some additional time to investigate the issue.” Late last year, according to the report, the debt was still unpaid.
For months, The Intercept has contacted the Pentagon to ascertain if Saudi Arabia has paid any additional portion of the money owed. Return receipts show that the questions were read three times by Pentagon officials in April and May. Despite dozens of follow-up messages in recent months, the Office of the Secretary of Defense has never responded to The Intercept’s questions. At this same time, the Biden administration has been brokering billions of dollars in arms deals with the kingdom leading up to its lifting of the offensive weapons ban last week — part of a rapprochement policy aimed at strengthening ties with Persian Gulf autocracies in the face of the Gaza war and battles with Iranian proxies, as well as curbing Russian and Chinese influence in the Middle East.
“The fact that the Pentagon won’t address the issue is concerning,” said Nancy Okail, the president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “The amount owed — $15 million — is not the issue. What is significant is the lack of transparency and accountability. This is symptomatic of the larger problem of opacity surrounding arms deals and defense spending when it comes to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”
The U.S.-backed Saudi-led war in Yemen, which deescalated following a 2022 truce, has directly or indirectly killed at least 377,000 people, including thousands of civilians slain in Saudi-coalition air strikes. A 2022 investigation by the Washington Post and Security Force Monitor at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that a substantial portion of Saudi coalition air raids were carried out by jets developed, maintained, and sold by U.S. companies, and by pilots who were trained by the U.S. military. That same year, a Government Accountability Office report noted that between March 2015 and August 2021, the United Nations estimated that coalition airstrikes in Yemen killed or injured more than 18,000 civilians. The GAO also determined that the Pentagon and the State Department failed to investigate the role of U.S.-provided military support in causing these casualties.
“The Saudi-led coalition has recklessly launched strikes killing nearly 15,000 innocent civilians and U.S.-origin weapons have been reportedly used in a number of these strikes, including a 2018 strike on a school bus that killed 40 children,” a bipartisan group of U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Mike Lee, R-Utah — announced in 2022. “Between 2015 through 2020, the U.S. provided more than $54.2 billion in defense articles and defense services to the Saudi and Emirati governments, in addition to nearly $650 million in military training.”
In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and critic of the war in Yemen who lived in Virginia and was a columnist for the Washington Post, was murdered and dismembered on the orders of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS. Then President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration never wavered in their support for MBS, plying the Saudi regime with arms, even in the wake of the international outcry over Khashoggi’s killing.
During his 2020 presidential election campaign, Joe Biden strongly criticized Saudi Arabia, promising to hold them accountable and condemn their actions. He expressed his disdain for the current Saudi government, stating that there is very little value in their leadership.
In 2021, the Biden administration initially banned the sale of certain offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia due to the high number of civilian casualties in Yemen. However, President Biden’s stance shifted, and he later greeted Crown Prince MBS warmly during their meetings in 2022 and 2023. Since taking office, Biden has approved over $9 billion in arms deals and security assistance to Saudi Arabia.
This change in approach by the Biden administration has sparked criticism from experts like Seth Binder, who believe that embracing MBS has allowed him to evade accountability for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and enabled his oppressive tactics.
Recently, the Biden administration announced the lifting of the ban on offensive arms sales to Saudi Arabia and approved an initial shipment of air-to-ground munitions. Additional transfers will be considered on a case-by-case basis moving forward.
Despite inquiries from The Intercept, the Pentagon and State Department did not provide detailed responses regarding the resumption of offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
Critics like Okail from the Center for International Policy have expressed disappointment in the Biden administration’s handling of the relationship with Saudi Arabia. They believe that Biden’s promises during his campaign to hold dictators accountable have not been fulfilled, as the administration has prioritized arms deals with Saudi Arabia to counter China and secure their allegiance to the U.S. for the foreseeable future.
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