After shooting at base, Pentagon restricts Saudi training

MIAMI — The Pentagon has suspended operational training for all Saudi military students in the United States, indefinitely halting flight instruction, firing range training and all other operations outside the classroom in the wake of a shooting last week at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida by a member of the Saudi Royal Air Force.

The suspension will affect nearly 900 Saudi students across the country, the Defense Department said Tuesday. Classroom teaching, including language courses, will continue while Pentagon leaders review vetting procedures for all foreign military trainees. An estimated 5,200 international students in the United States will be covered by the review.

The “safety stand-down” was issued pending the results of an FBI investigation into the shooting Friday that left three young sailors dead and eight other people wounded. Several lawmakers, including the GOP’s Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose district includes Pensacola, had called for a review of foreign military programs and their screening process.

The suspension of operational training for hundreds of Saudi military students is an extraordinary rebuke by the Pentagon, especially at a time when President Donald Trump has tamped down suggestions that the Saudi government must be held to account on an array of recent issues.

Even before the shooting Friday, the White House had been fighting efforts in Congress to cut military aid to the Saudis, a reflection of anger over the continuing war in Yemen and the brutal killing in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist who had been granted legal residence in the United States.

U.S. intelligence findings closely tie Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, to the killing.

Senior Defense Department officials, speaking to reporters in a hastily organized conference call Tuesday night, insisted that suspending operational training for students from Saudi Arabia — the only country singled out for a broader review of security procedures governing the international military students — would be short-term and would not upset the strategic relationship between the two countries.