U.S. support for the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen has long been a deadly headache for Washington, rife with U.S.-backed airstrikes targeting civilians and a spiraling crisis of starvation. And as a CNN report published Monday makes clear, U.S. weapons sold to allies have now ended up in the hands of al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militants.
Enough is enough. An end of U.S. support for the Saudi coalition in Yemen is long overdue.
The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and its allies has fundamentally been a story of arms-for-oil deals. That’s all well and good — the U.S. makes great weapons and needs access to freely flowing oil. But U.S. arms sales are not supposed to be free-for-all handovers of deadly technology.
Part of the deal is that allies buying weapons have to abide by stringent end-use agreements. They are especially required to refrain from transferring weapons to third parties.
At the heart of the CNN investigation is a finding that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, both members of the U.S.-backed coalition fighting in Yemen and party to U.S. arms deals, ignored those provisions. American military equipment “has been passed on, sold, stolen or abandoned in Yemen’s state of chaos, where murky alliances and fractured politics mean little hope for any system of accountability or tracking.”
Instead of turning a blind eye to U.S. export stickers on military equipment in the hands of unauthorized militias, Washington must hold its allies who transferred the weapons accountable.
Already, there have been some efforts to do so. In December, the Senate voted 56–41 to cut U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen. Lawmakers must finish the work they began last year and hold Saudi Arabia and its coalition accountable — even if that means interfering with or limiting the president’s power.
The White House, of course, would be wise to take leadership on the issue, heeding criticism from Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, who have criticized President Trump’s failure to stand up to Saudi Arabia.
