Senate votes to support Trump’s weapons sale to Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday narrowly turned back a bipartisan bid to rebuke Saudi Arabia and reject President Donald Trump’s plan to sell the kingdom more than $500 million in precisionguided munitions, sparing the new Republican administration an embarrassing defeat.

The vote Tuesday was 53-47, clearing the way for the sale to be finalized.

The precision munitions are part of Trump’s proposed $110 billion arms package to Riyadh, which the administration said would create U.S. jobs while also improving a key ally’s military capability.

But opponents of the deal, led by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have been sharply critical of Riyadh’s role in Yemen’s civil war and the kingdom’s human rights abuses.

They said they feared the sophisticated weapons could be used in the conflict against Yemeni civilians. Despite coming up short, Murphy declared a partial victory because the resolution of disapproval secured 20 more votes than did a similar measure he and Paul authored in September to stop the sale of more than $1 billion worth of American-made tanks and other weapons to Saudi Arabia.

“Today’s vote total would’ve been unthinkable not long ago, but Congress is finally taking notice that Saudi Arabia is using U.S. munitions to deliberately hit civilian targets inside Yemen,” Murphy said.

Paul, who challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination as a leader of the party’s noninterventionist wing, sharply criticized Saudi Arabia during remarks on the Senate floor.

He called Riyadh the “No. 1 exporter of Jihadi philosophy” and said the munitions sale threatens the lives of innocent Yemenis.

“I am embarrassed that people would bring up trying to feather the nests of corporations in order to sell these weapons,” Paul said. “Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other senators supporting the sale said the United States can’t deny its Middle East allies the weapons they need to combat the Islamic State and check Iran’s aggression in the region.

The war in Yemen is pitting the country’s internationally recognized government and a Saudi-led coalition against the Iranian-backed Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are allied with army units loyal to a former president.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is supported by the United States, has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen since March 2015, and thousands of civilians have been killed in the fighting, according to the U.N.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said rejecting the sale of precision munitions to Saudi Arabia would be a victory for Iran.