A fight is brewing within the Democratic party over whether to permit the sale of defensive air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration’s State Department approved the sale of 280 AIM-120C missiles to Riyadh, but a far-left group of members in the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., introduced legislation on Nov. 12 to block the sale.
Refusing to provide even defensive missiles to Saudi Arabia will not only damage U.S. relations with a valuable security partner, make it harder for the kingdom to defend itself against drone attacks by Iranian-supported Houthi terrorists, and incentivize Riyadh to acquire weapons from suppliers such as Russia or China; it will also worsen the conflict in Yemen, which is the primary cause of the horrible humanitarian crisis there.
