Congress opens several new fronts in bid to block Gulf arms sales
The House joined Senate efforts to stop the Donald Trump administration from selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
House Democrats Wednesday introduced a series of measures tackling the Donald Trump administration’s invocation of emergency powers to transfer arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, supplementing similar bipartisan efforts in the Senate.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., introduced a joint resolution intended to block 22 separate transfers to the Gulf worth $8.1 billion that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo approved last month without the customary congressional notification period by citing an emergency threat posed by Iran and its support for Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
“There is no emergency, but there is a conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians with US-made weapons and a Congress that is tired of being complicit,” Lieu said in a statement. “Our arms sales process was designed to include congressional review to ensure that US interests and laws are always met with each sale. The Trump administration knows that these sales would not meet that standard, so they’ve decided to declare a fake emergency in order to bypass Congress.”
Reps. David Cicilline, D-R.I., Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., have introduced separate legislation specifically taking aim at Raytheon-made precision-guided munitions included in the sales. The lawmakers introduced the new legislation as House Democrats grilled R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, on the Iran emergency declaration during a hearing Wednesday.
