Iran Press / America: Weapon purchases from US companies by foreign countries are done either through direct commercial sales, negotiated between a government and a company; or, foreign military sales, in which a foreign government works with the Pentagon on a potential deal.
According to PressTV, the State Department said on Thursday that combined weapon sales from American manufacturers for fiscal year 2018 were up 13 percent over fiscal year 2017 figures. The largest US arms manufacturers include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp., it is said that the increase in arms sales was a result of looser government restrictions coupled with high-level efforts to close deals.
Despite due concerns by human rights and arms control advocates, US President Donald Trump helped the increase in arms sales by promoting the idea that “economic security is national security.”
The United States is already dominant in the global weapons trade, being the biggest arms merchant in the world since the late 1990s.
Ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia
The biggest past, present, and possibly future international customer of US-made weapons and military equipment has been Saudi Arabia. In 2017, Riyadh bought $18 billion worth of weapons from the US – mainly bombs and missiles used against innocent Yemeni civilians including women and children.
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EU Parliament calls for stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia
The US arms sales to Riyadh comes despite international entities urging Washington to ban all sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia for launching a deadly war on the Yemeni nation since 2015.
Back in 2016, the European Parliament had passed another resolution through which it had demanded the imposition of an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia as long as it spearheaded the war on Yemen.
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Trump and Saudi Arabia: Long, deep business ties
Trump, who has described Saudi Arabia as “a great ally of ours”, and has totally dismissed the idea of suspending weapons sales to Riyadh, saying: "If we did that we would be punishing ourselves." 203/103
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