Congressional Democrats are making another attempt to prevent the Biden administration from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia in exchange for OPEC+’s decision to significantly cut oil production.
Last week’s announcement by the oil cartel was widely seen as an incentive for Russia, which relies on its energy exports to fund the Kremlin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. It is also about undermining the West’s attempts to choke Moscow’s energy dollars.
In retaliation, California Representative Ro Khanna and Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal called for new legislation to “immediately halt all U.S. arms sales” to the Middle Eastern kingdom, which leads OPEC+, in a joint editorial published in Politics on Sunday.
They labeled Russian autocratic leader Vladimir Putin a “nuclear bomber” because of his increasingly hostile threats to use such violence in Ukraine.
OPEC+’s cut of 2 million barrels of oil a day will “exacerbate global inflation, undermine successful efforts in the US to cut gas prices and help fuel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” lawmakers wrote.
President Joe Biden called the decision disappointing in comments to reporters last week.
The decision is expected to take effect in November and could see U.S. gas prices across the country rise by between 10 and 20 cents a gallon, Gasbuddy said. News week.
The national average as of Monday is about $3.92, according to AAA.
Blumenthal and Khanna argued that the US military deals with the Saudis, which lawmakers said are “more extensive than many realize,” were now Biden’s greatest leverage.
President Joe Biden was criticized for meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Jeddah over the summer at a time when US oil prices were causing financial pain to Americans at home, though the White House has denied that the trip was for oil.
It is now being brought up again after OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia, announced a dramatic production cut that is seen as a huge boost to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine
“Put simply, America should not give such unrestricted control over strategic defense systems to an apparent ally of our greatest enemy – nuclear bomb extortioner Vladmir(sp) Putin,” Khanna and Blumenthal wrote.
They stopped condemning US-Saudi relations, admitted their place as leader in the region and “as a regional ally against Iran”, but denounced the OPEC+ decision as “a terrible mistake”.
“The country’s support for Russia should lead to a major overhaul of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia,” the lawmaker added.
Democrats said the legislative effort already has support from both sides of the aisle in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
But a former Trump administration official who worked on US-Saudi Arabia relations pushed the idea back in a statement to DailyMail.com.
“It is a national disgrace that President Biden has outsourced the energy supply of the American people and turned them over to foreign wars, dictators and cartels,” said Victoria Coates, the former special energy envoy to Saudi Arabia during the Trump administration.
“The right response is not to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, an ally of more than 70 years who has been directly shelled daily by Iranian proxies in Yemen. It is to embrace our potential as a major energy producing country that can responsibly protect our citizens from shocks in the international energy markets.”
Rep. California’s Ro Khanna (left) and Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal (right) called for legislation in response to halt US arms sales to Saudi Arabia
Meanwhile, US-Saudi relations were also scrutinized on Sunday by another of Biden’s ally.
Connecticut Democrat Senator Chris Murphy advised the president to “rethink” US military cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
Murphy criticized the long-standing US policy of looking “the other way” at Saudi Arabia’s many human rights abuses, including the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi, pointing out that the kingdom does not have such loyalties. showed.
“We wanted to know when the chips ran out, in a global crisis, that the Saudis would choose us over Russia,” he said. “Well, they didn’t, they chose Russia.”
“They chose to support the Russians, drive up oil prices…and there has to be consequences for that.”
Biden himself had criticized the Saudi royal family while on campaign, contrasting with the Trump administration’s more candid relations with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, known in particular as MBS.
He vowed to make the kingdom a “pariah” when he took the debate stage in November 2019, promising it would “pay the price” for Khashoggi’s disintegration and killing.
Those words were turned against him this summer when Biden embarked on a trip to the Middle East, where he met Saudi officials, including MBS, in Jeddah.
The White House had said the trip was an attempt to reaffirm the US’s relationship with allies in the Gulf.
But Biden’s critics accused him of holding the Saudis head over heels at a time when domestic gas prices were at record highs.
Pump prices fell dramatically during the second half of the summer after a national average of $5 a gallon.
However, they have started to rise again, with the national average rising more than 60 cents from last month to now.