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'Trump’s Saudi stance set by interest groups'

A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on May 20, 2017, shows US President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump has signed a controversial deal to sell $110 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Press TV has spoken to a former US diplomat in Saudi Arabia Michael Springmann, and a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program Jim Walsh to discuss the circumstances under which the arms deal is signed including Riyadh facing accusations of committing war crimes in Yemen and human rights violations on its soil.

Michael Springmann pointed to the impact of lobby groups on the Trump administration with regard to the Saudi arms deal, saying Trump is “not an independent president but a president under the thumb of special interest groups, of people or organizations who want America to adopt their viewpoints” and to work on their behalf instead of the interests of the United States.

The former diplomat noted that the president’s “son-in-law Jared Kushner, who knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy or Saudi Arabia or arms sales, arranged this trip,” adding that President Trump has been captured by “neocons, the militarists and the Zionists.”

 

A giant billboard bearing portraits of US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman is seen on a main road in Riyadh, on May 19, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Springmann recalled that during his campaign, Trump severely criticized Saudi Arabia as a “repressive state” which was “tied to the September 11 attacks,” but he changed his mind on the Al Saud regime, because he is “obsessed with money and selling arms of all kinds to Saudi Arabia.”

“It is absolutely astonishing that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, goes to Saudi Arabia and refuses to criticize them for what they’ve done and what they’ve said” in the region, he exclaimed.

According to the commentator, “Saudi Arabia, [Persian] Gulf states, Israel and Turkey are the people who are really backing terrorism.”

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Meanwhile, Walsh said that Trump’s previous statements during his campaign for presidency showed that he deemphasized human rights and democratization in other countries.

The way the new US administration is treating Saudi Arabia “reflects Trump’s fundamental view which is he does not want to get involved in other countries’ affairs,” the researcher explained.

He criticized both Republicans and Democrats for their policy toward the Saudis, saying, “The US has been selling billions of dollars of arms to Saudi Arabia for a long long time by both Republican and Democratic presidents.”

He pointed to America’s ignorant policy toward Riyadh, noting, “There is no doubt that the Saudi government has supported Wahhabism, which has been the intellectual foundation for ... extremism.”

“If Saudi Arabia turned off the [flow] of money and arms to Sunni extremists in the region, we would have a much more peaceful region,” Walsh said.

The analyst further dismissed the notion that the neocons have captured Donald Trump, by saying that “they hate him,” because “the neocons want him to wage wars in favor of democracy and he is not going to do that.”


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