Alghadeer TV Alghadeer TV
The Democratic chairman of the United States’ Senate Foreign Relations Committee has urged the country to freeze its cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including most arms sales, after OPEC+ in which Riyadh is a top producer announced it would cut oil production.
“The United States must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary…,” Senator Bob Menendez said in a statement on Monday.
Earlier this week, OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers, collectively called OPEC+, agreed on radical oil production cuts. The move, in turn, would likely lift up gasoline prices, thus increasing Russia and other producer countries’ energy revenues.
This is while the US has been scrambling to curb Russia’s energy income, which Washington claims goes towards financing Moscow’s February-present military operation in Ukraine.
The operation has been seeking to defend the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk’s pro-Russian population against persecution by Kiev. In 2014, the republics broke away from Ukraine, refusing to recognize a Western-backed Ukrainian government that had overthrown a democratically-elected Russia-friendly administration.
“As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough,” Menendez said.
“There simply is no room to play both sides of this conflict…,” he added, saying Riyadh had to choose whether it distances itself from Moscow over the conflict or supports the military operation.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia chose the latter in a terrible decision driven by economic self-interest,” the senator said.
US President Joe Biden has also called the decision by the OPEC+ “shortsighted.”
Despite finding fault with the Russian military operation, the US has been providing unreserved arms as well as logistical and political support for Riyadh’s 2015-present war on Yemen.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands and driven entire Yemen close to the edge of countrywide famine.
