Senate Permits $1.15 Billion Arms Sale To Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON ― The Senate has rejected a measure that would have blocked a $1.15 billion weapons transfer to Saudi Arabia, disappointing critics of the Kingdom and tacitly endorsing President Barack Obama’s policy of record arms deals to the Saudis and other U.S. partners in the troubled Middle East.

A handful of lawmakers from both parties backed the bill, describing it as a way to begin putting necessary limits on the U.S.-Saudi alliance. The bill’s supporters say the Kingdom has threatened American interests by committing war crimes in its brutal U.S.-backed campaign to restore the government in Yemen, and by spreading a radical strain of Islam that some terror groups, like al Qaeda and the self-described Islamic State, have partially co-opted.

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