Washington could soon lift its ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Riyadh

US President Joe Biden has given the greenlight to lift a ban on the sale of precision-guided munitions and other weapons to Saudi, reversing a three-year policy engineered to end Saudi’s conflict with the Houthis in Yemen, Reuters reports, quoting unnamed senior US officials. Bloomberg also later had the story.

What gives? “The Saudis have met their end of the [bargain], and we are prepared to meet ours,” a senior Biden administration official said. “We also note the positive steps that the Saudi Ministry of Defense has taken over the past three years to substantially improve their civilian harm mitigation processes, in part thanks to the work of US trainers and advisors,” the official source added.

The decision means that previously off-limits air-to-ground munitions will once again be sold to the Kingdom, an anonymous State Department official told the newswire. “We will consider new transfers on a typical case-by-case basis consistent with the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy,” the source added.

The caveat: While sales might start up again as soon as next week, implementation of the decision will still have to be reviewed by Congress before it can go into effect.

REMEMBER- A US defense pact — part of a wider series of agreements on advanced technology and nuclear energy — is in limbo now the further we push into the US presidential election campaign.