The United States on Thursday announced the approval of $16.46 billion in military sales to the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, two Gulf states that have been hit hard by fallout from the Iran war.
Iran responded to the massive US-Israeli air campaign launched late last month with barrages of missiles and drones that have caused deaths and damage in various Gulf countries, which have been forced to expend significant military resources to counter attacks.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has “determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” of the military equipment, thereby waiving the requirement that Congress give its approval.
The biggest single sale is of lower-tier air and missile defense sensor radars — which are designed to track high-speed targets and give data to a missile defense network — to Kuwait for $8 billion, according to a statement from the State Department.
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Additional News. UAE.
The Trump administration has approved about $7 billion in weapons for the United Arab Emirates that the State Department is not required to announce to the public under rules governing US arms exports, the Wall Street Journal reports.
That is in addition to arms sales to three Middle East countries worth more than $16.5 billion announced earlier on Thursday, the Journal says.
The unannounced deals include the sale of Patriot PAC-3 Missiles worth about $5.6 billion and CH-47 Chinook helicopters costing about $1.32 billion to the UAE, the Journal says, citing US officials, adding that those sales were not announced publicly because they expanded previously agreed arms deals.