The Saudi Royal Family is reportedly worth more than $1.4 trillion, but for several years, the Pentagon has been chasing the kingdom for $15 million it owes for American assistance during the Saudi war in Yemen. For months, the Defense Department has ducked The Intercept’s questions about Saudi Arabia welching on its debt.
Despite the unpaid debt, the Biden administration announced last Friday that it is lifting a ban on selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, authorizing an initial shipment of air-to-ground munitions to the Gulf kingdom. The ban had been in place for the past three years as a response to the heavy civilian casualties of the country’s campaign in Yemen but did not apply to sales of so-called defensive arms and military services. Those sales have amounted to almost $10 billion over the past four years.
The outstanding balance dates from an operation carried out between March 2015 and November 2018. The Pentagon spent about $300 million to fly aerial refueling missions to support the warplanes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as those nations waged their war to shore up the government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by Iran-backed Houthi rebels. America also provided the Saudi military and its allies weapons, combat training, and other “logistical and intelligence support.”
A Pentagon report obtained exclusively by The Intercept finds that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stiffed the United States on its outstanding fuel bill. After the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates paid off a large portion of the debt in 2021 and 2022, Saudi Arabia has paid just over $950,000 on a years-old balance that, as of late last year, totaled $15.1 million.
According to the report, which was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, representatives of the Defense Logistics Agency and U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military activity in the Middle East, traveled to Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, in March 2022 to meet with the Saudi Ministry of Finance and........