The secretary of state cited an emergency provision that allows the administration to circumvent the congressional approval of the sale.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved a $4 billion arms delivery to Israel that includes 2,000-pound bombs and other munitions that had been withheld by President Biden. He cited an emergency provision that allows the administration to circumvent the congressional approval of the sale.
Rubio announced the decision in a statement on Saturday, describing it as a long-overdue reversal of the Biden administration’s restrictions on arms sales to the Jewish state. “The decision to reverse the Biden Administration’s partial arms embargo, which wrongly withheld a number of weapons and ammunition from Israel, is yet another sign that Israel has no greater ally in the White House than President Trump,” he said.
The Trump administration’s moves to expedite arms deliveries to Israel follows the president’s rescission of a Biden memo that required the secretary of state to “obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances” from Israel regarding its use of these weapons.
On Friday, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency disclosed that the sale would include 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator bomb bodies and 35,000 MK 84 or BLU-117 bomb bodies, worth $2 billion. Another contract includes Caterpillar bulldozers worth $295 million, which Israel uses to clear explosives and shield Israel Defense Forces personnel in Gaza.
A third sale announced by the Pentagon on Friday includes MK-83 1,000-pound bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits.
Congressional Republicans had long warned that the Biden administration was holding up the export of these weapons as part of an effort to block Israel from going into the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
In a letter on November 26, Senator Tom Cotton wrote that, in addition to Biden’s publicly disclosed efforts to block the transfer of 2,000-pound bombs, the former administration “has manipulated Department of Defense, Department of State, and congressional approval processes to broaden the arms embargo behind the scenes.” It blocked bulldozer and MK-83 shipments, in addition to declining to expedite the shipment of Apache helicopters to Israel.
Rubio’s announcement of the approval of the sales stated that the Trump administration has approved about $12 billion in foreign military sales to Israel.
Rubio added: “This important decision coincides with President Trump’s repeal of a Biden-era memorandum which had imposed baseless and politicized conditions on military assistance to Israel at a time when our close ally was fighting a war of survival on multiple fronts against Iran and terror proxies.”