Last week, Saudi Arabia joined Russia and other petroleum-producing nations in the cartel known as OPEC+ in voting to slash oil production at a moment of historically high energy prices and rising inflation. The timing appears designed not only to fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine but also to reverse the aggressive work that the U.S. Congress and the Biden administration have done to counter high inflation rates and bring down gas prices. But this hostile action by Washington’s putative friends in Riyadh did offer one silver lining: it showed that the United States has considerable leverage to correct what has become a fundamentally lopsided relationship. Over and over, Saudi Arabia has broken its promises to the United States, whether by massacring civilians in Yemen with U.S. weapons, by murdering the U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or by committing other human rights violations. It is time for the United States to stop enabling Saudi Arabia’s bad behavior and reset this one-sided relationship.
To that end, one of us, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, has introduced legislation that would pause all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for one year in the wake of its decision to endanger the global economy by cutting oil production. If the Saudis reverse course and restore promised oil-production levels, Washington should reconsider the pause on some less sensitive weapons sales and related activities, such as the servicing of aircraft and M1A2 Abrams tanks. Transfers of sensitive weapons systems such as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot missile systems that were offered to Saudi Arabia beginning in 2017, however, should remain paused until the U.S.-Saudi relationship has been fully reassessed. And if Riyadh doubles down on its misguided alignment with Moscow, Washington should be prepared to permanently halt such weapons sales. Arguably, Saudi Arabia needs U.S. arms more than the United States needs Saudi oil. If Riyadh continues to take more from Washington than it gives in return, it should have to deal with the consequences.
