Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called on President Trump and other world leaders to stop sending money and weapons to Saudi Arabia, a regime he characterized as menacing and murderous.
“Proliferating arms in the midst of chaos is a recipe for disaster,” Paul said in an op-ed for Fox News. “One cannot overstate the calamity that awaits the Middle East, and perhaps the world, if Saudi Arabia should misuse ‘peaceful’ nuclear technology in pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
Paul’s words were similar to statements House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made earlier Thursday saying the Saudis were “getting away with murder” and Trump was complicit in their misbehavior.
“He chooses to ignore it,” Pelosi said of Trump. “He’s engaged in a deadly war in Yemen which the Congress opposes. So we have important policy matters to deal with.”
Paul noted that “even” Hillary Clinton warned an aide in 2016 that Americans need “to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.”
“What sane person would sell arms to a regime that kills, tortures, and imprisons dissidents,” Paul asked.
The United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia came under intense scrutiny earlier this year after the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi — a killing widely viewed as carried out by the Saudi Arabain government.
In the weeks following Khashoggi’s death, Trump drew criticism for continuing to call Saudi Arabia “a good ally.”
The Senate will vote on a pair of resolutions that would put a halt on future weapons sales to Bahrain and Qatar, Paul said.
“Dumping more weapons into the Middle East won’t get us any closer to peace,” Paul said. “Our Founding Fathers were wary of granting presidents too much power.”
Accusing the country of waging a war on Christianity by persecuting Asia Bibi and others, Paul likewise urged the U.S. to cut off all foreign aid to Pakistan in a November op-ed for Breitbart.
