US Arms, Vehicles Secretly Arrive in Yemen Despite Congressional Opposition

Video footage secretly recorded and leaked to the press shows US weaponry, including armored vehicles, being unloaded at night in a port in southern Yemen’s Aden. The ship making the delivery had turned off its transponders during the delivery.

Though the Trump Administration has authorized continued sales to Saudi Arabia, and those sales are clearly meant to keep the Yemen War going, it’s also apparent they don’t want to do it too publicly, given major opposition from both parties in Congress.

Clearly, they’re not worried enough about this opposition to not send weapons into a war zone, but they did hope to slip it in under the cover of darkness. Yemeni authorities are also reportedly arresting people they suspect of having been involved in telling the press about it.

It’s unclear if these arms were part of US sales to Saudi Arabia or the UAE, though in either case it is almost certain that the weapons being sent will be used in ways that violate those countries’ agreements with the US about arms usage.

Huge civilian death tolls in Yemen, inflicted by US warplanes dropping US bombs, is fueling a lot of the calls to stop sending more US bombs there. The administration has emphasized the amount of money made in the sales, and has rebuffed Congressional attempts to block the sales.