Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says Riyadh \u201cwill pay nothing\u201d to the United States for the kingdom’s \u201csecurity,\u201d\u00a0in rebuttal to US President Donald Trump who recently said King Salman would not last in power \u201cfor two weeks\u201d without US military support.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually we will pay nothing for our security. We believe that all the armaments we have from the United States of America are paid for, it\u2019s not free armament,” the Saudi crown prince said in a\u00a0Bloomberg interview conducted on Wednesday and published on Friday.<\/p>\n
He made the comments in response to a question\u00a0whether Riyadh\u00a0needed to pay Washington\u00a0more for its security.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since the relationship started between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, we\u2019ve bought everything with money,\u201d he further said, adding that since Trump came to power, the kingdom decided to purchase over 60 percent of its needed armament from the US \u201cfor the next 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old crown prince went on to say that Saudi Arabia\u00a0had agreed to buy $110 billion worth of US weapons and signed investment deals worth billions more, some \u201c$400 billion\u201d in total, since Trump took office in early 2017, and described\u00a0the deals as \u201ca good achievement” for\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso included in these agreements are that part of these armaments will be manufactured in Saudi Arabia, so it will create jobs in America and Saudi Arabia, good trade, good benefits for both countries and also good economic growth. Plus, it will help our security,\u201d Bin Salman further noted.<\/p>\n
His interview came a day after Trump told a cheering crowd of supporters at a rally in Southaven, Mississippi, that Saudi King Salman would not last in power unless the US provided military support for the Arab kingdom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say they’re rich? And I love the King, King Salman. But I said ‘King \u2014 we\u2019re protecting you \u2014 you might not be there for two weeks without us \u2014 you have to pay for your military,’\u201d, Trump said.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Trump said at a rally\u00a0in West Virginia that although the Saudis \u201chave got trillions of dollars\u201d, \u201cwe don\u2019t get what we should be getting\u201d from them. He also stressed that with the support of Washington Saudi Arabia is \u201ctotally safe\u201d, but \u201cwithout us, who knows what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed on how he would regard\u00a0Trump’s humiliating and harsh rhetoric against\u00a0Saudi Arabia,\u00a0bin Salman said, “I love working with him,” referring to the controversial\u00a0remarks as a “bad issue” offset by “99 percent of good things.”\u00a0His response, however,\u00a0prompted the interviewer to say that \u201cit seems to be a little bit more than one percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Trump signed the largest arms deal in history with the Arab country despite warnings that he could be accused of being complicit in the regime’s war crimes in Yemen.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabian Military Industries\u2019 (SAMI) Chief Executive Andreas Schwer\u00a0said\u00a0he expected to finalize the first partnership deals with South African arms companies by the end of the year, without mentioning the initial partners by name.<\/p>\n
Last December, Russia said it was working with Saudi Arabia to finalize the agreement to sell the S-400 Triumf, the latest Russian long-range anti-aircraft missile system.<\/p>\n
Saudi King Salman made a four-day trip to Moscow in March 2017.\u00a0During the visit, Russia also agreed to sell Riyadh a Kornet-M anti-armor system, Tos-A1 rocket launcher, AGS-30 grenade launcher, and Kalashnikov AK-103, according to the information office of Russia\u2019s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation.<\/p>\n
However, Saudi Arabia relies heavily on the US in its brutal war on Yemen. Washington has deployed a commando force on the Arab kingdom\u2019s border with Yemen to help destroy arms belonging to Yemen\u2019s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement. Washington has also provided logistical support and aerial refueling.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia and allies invaded Yemen in March 2015 to reinstate Riyadh-allied former officials. The coalition has failed to achieve the goal despite superior military power. Instead, some 15,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says Riyadh \u201cwill pay nothing\u201d to the United States for the kingdom’s \u201csecurity,\u201d\u00a0in rebuttal to US President Donald Trump who recently said King Salman would not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,90,96,107,137,139,160,174,184,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}