The following article was posted on the TrumpAccountable.com website June 6, 2017:
While Donald Trump has tried hard to call his first international trip a success, one of the cornerstone pieces of the first leg of the trip is not holding up to scrutiny. There is increased reporting that indicates that the $110 billion arms sale agreement coordinated by Jared Kushner and signed by Trump and the Saudis is not much of an agreement and much of it is recycled from letters of intent and potential agreements the Obama administration hammered out over the past few years.
To be clear, there is a difference between an arms sale agreement (which is binding) and a collection of letters of intent (which is not). The last arms sale agreement the U.S. brokered with the Saudis was in 2012. With the drop in oil prices, the Saudis “have struggled to meet their payments” making it unlikely that they will actually follow through on many of the non-binding letters of intent in the “agreement” Trump touted during his trip, according to Bruce Riedel from the Center for Middle East Policy. Continue reading “Saudi Arms Sales: Not Really Happening”