President Trump wound down his first trip overseas as president this past weekend, during which his first stop was Saudi Arabia, a country former President Obama controversially visited in 2016. While Obama was barely given an official greeting at the Riyadh airport when Air Force One flew in, President Trump was greeted in the Saudi capital by Saudi King Salman personally, signaling a change in attitude amongst the kingdom’s leaders toward the U.S. administration, which could have something to do with a large arms deal that Trump announced during his visit.
The deal, worth $110 billion immediately as well as an additional $350 billion over the next 10 years, grants the Wahhabist Sunni kingdom Paveway II and III laser-guided bombs as well as smart Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), among much other military hardware.
The deal was strongly criticized by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. “Less than a year after Congress voted to let the victims and the families of victims of 9/11 sue Saudi Arabia, the current administration is proposing the largest-ever arms sale to Saudi Arabia… Selling military weapons to questionable allies is not in our national security interest. At some point, the United States must stop and realize that we’re fueling an arms race in the Middle East,” wrote Paul in an editorial for Breitbart News.
Former Florida Senator and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham also was vocally critical of the agreement. “From what I know today, there is ample evidence that 9/11 would not have happened but for the assistance provided by Saudi Arabia. The result of that assistance was nearly 3,000 persons murdered, 90 percent of them Americans. And a new wave of terrorism with Saudi financial and operational support has beset the world,” stated Graham.
Perhaps in recognition of this expected criticism, President Trump made sure to emphasize efforts at peacekeeping in the region in his official address in Riyadh. “This agreement will help the Saudi military take a greater role in security operations… Today, we will make history with the opening of a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology – located right here, in this central part of the Islamic World. This groundbreaking new center represents a clear declaration that Muslim-majority countries must take the lead in combatting radicalization,” admonished Trump.
“In sheer numbers, the deadliest toll [from terrorism] has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence. Some estimates hold that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim.”
Trump boasted of another anti-terrorism initiative with the Saudis. “I am proud to announce that the nations here today will be signing an agreement to prevent the financing of terrorism, called the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center — co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia and joined by every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is another historic step in a day that will be long remembered.”
Of course, left unsaid by Trump is that Saudi Arabia in the past has been a major sponsor of terrorism, with links to many attacks up to and including 9/11. In an article on the website Politico in 2016, Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, wrote, “In the past, when we raised the issue of funding Islamic extremists with the Saudis, all we got were denials. This time, in the course of meetings with King Salman, Crown Prince Nayef, Deputy Crown Mohammad Bin Salman and several ministers, one top Saudi official admitted to me, ‘We misled you.'”
As Khalilzad explains it, “Over time, the Saudis say, their support for extremism turned on them, metastasizing into a serious threat to the Kingdom and to the West. They had created a monster that had begun to devour them. ‘We did not own up to it after 9/11 because we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy,’ the Saudi senior official conceded. ‘And we were in denial.'”
Khalilzad claims that “in their current thinking, the Saudis see Islamic extremism as one of the two major threats facing the Kingdom — the other threat being Iran.”
Indeed, most Middle East analysts would confirm that for Saudi Arabia, Shiite Iran is seen as the Kingdom’s most obvious enemy — not Israel. President Trump made sure to include numerous mentions of Iran in his Riyadh speech. “No discussion of stamping out [terrorism] would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists all three [of their desires] — safe harbor, financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment. It’s a regime that is responsible for so much instability in the region. I am speaking, of course, of Iran. From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region.”
By nearly all analysts’ accounts, Iran is, in fact, the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism. But Trump only touched on the fact that Iran is also a strong ally of the Syrian government led by Bashar Assad, perhaps because that might lay bare the fact that ISIS — Assad’s sworn enemy — is a fundamentalist Sunni group which aligns — at least on paper — with the interests of Saudi Arabia.
In the past, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks has stated that Saudi Arabia has given funding and logistical support to ISIS. Therefore, there’s great temptation to ask where all the American weaponry that’s being sold to the Saudis is really headed.
To be sure, some of it is headed to Yemen, where the Saudis have committed to fighting the Houthi rebels which have taken over the government there. A number of U.S. lawmakers, including Senator Paul, have bluntly criticized the Saudis’ intervention in Yemen, accusing the Kingdom of precipitating a humanitarian crisis there and committing war crimes against civilians.
But $460 billion buys a tremendous amount of hardware. While President Trump was quick to cite the creation of “many thousands of [defense-related] jobs in America” due to the deal, one has to ask how those jobs are being paid for. Is the U.S. effectively funding both sides of the war in Syria?
While it’s admirable that President Trump has brought the issue of terrorism to the doorstep of the Saudis, it’s debatable what the goals of this gargantuan arms deal really are. In the Senate, Senator Paul and others have vowed to block the sale agreement. As Paul has said, “The moment when the best interests of defense contractors start determining what is in the national security interest of our country, the tail has begun to wag the dog.”
