Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s ‘Emergency’ to Justify Saudi Arms Sales

Bypassing Congress on this issue will come back to haunt the president.

May 24, 2019 at 9:29 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Of precision-guided munitions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “It makes more sense to provide them than for the Saudis to get them from Russia or China."
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP, via Getty Images

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For more than a year now, Senator Bob Menendez has delayed the sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to make a point about the war in Yemen. On Friday, the Trump administration went ahead with those sales over his objections to make a point about the threat from Iran.

That is made possible by a rarely used provision in the Arms Export Control Act. Section 36 of that law gives the president the authority to over rule Congressional objections to arms sales in case of an emergency.