Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent decision to authorize emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia was an exercise in “foolishness” that flouted federal law, a prominent Senate Republican charged.
“The process that the State Department followed for these weapons sales, not to put too fine a point on it, was crap,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday during a Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “The simpler process is follow the damn law and respect it.”
Pompeo used an emergency provision of federal law to break a logjam over arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing “many months of congressional delay” in approving the deals amid heightened tensions with Iran. That maneuver angered Democrats who opposed the sales, but Cruz’s emphatic rebuke showed irritation has spread across party lines.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it is simply Democrats that are concerned about this,” Cruz told R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary who leads the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs under Pompeo. “I voted with the administration on the substance because of the threat of Iran, but I tell you, from my end, if the administration does it again and there is not a live and exigent emergency, you will not have my vote, and I predict you will not have the vote of a number of other Republicans as well.”
Cooper defended the May 24 emergency declaration, which authorized 22 separate deals with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, as a justifiable response to reports of Iranian plots against U.S. forces in the region. The show of solidarity between America and Gulf allies, he suggested, contributed to U.S. efforts to deter conflict with Iran. And it had the broader value of stymieing Russian and Chinese attempts to strike any bargains that could draw the Saudis away from the U.S. partnership, he added.
“This action is not intended to be an escalatory military step; instead, it is a loud and clear message to Iran that we stand by our regional partners at a particularly dangerous time,” Cooper testified. “We simply cannot allow openings our adversaries will most certainly exploit to disrupt partnerships, to reduce our regional influence, to impact our defense industrial base, and to spread chaos.”
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman James Risch, while stressing that the administration shouldn’t use emergency declarations in a way that would “have a meaningful impact on Congress’ authority over time,” accepted that argument.
“Emergency declarations are useful not just for the tangible military capabilities they transfer to allies and partners but are equally important for the messages they convey,” the Idaho Republican said.
But the ploy outraged Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the panel. The New Jersey senator had used his procedural powers to hold up the sales, many of which are intended to support the Saudi Arabian-led coalition’s fight against Iran-backed rebel groups in Yemen. Bipartisan opposition to such deals has been growing over the last year due to frustration over Saudi Arabia’s murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the mounting civilian casualties in the Yemen conflict.
“How would sales that will not be delivered for many, many months immediately respond to an emergency?” Menendez asked, challenging the legality of the declaration. “In fact, not only did the department not make a persuasive case, you made no case since last October after Jamal Khashoggi was literally butchered on orders from the highest levels of the Saudi government.”
Cruz, who regards Saudi Arabia as one of the United States’ “problematic allies,” noted that none of the weapons approved has been shipped in the 47 days since the emergency declaration.
“And for whatever reason, the administration — in what seems to me to be a not-fully-baked decision-making process — decided to circumvent the constitutional responsibility of Congress and act unilaterally,” he said. “If the department had a year to gaze at its navel and consider this, the department had 30 days to take it to Congress and follow the law, and it was foolishness not to.”
