Saudi Crown Prince says won’t pay US for own security

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said his country will not pay Washington for its own security, saying his oil-rich kingdom was created even before the US itself.

“Saudi Arabia was there before the United States of America. It’s there since 1744, I believe more than 30 years before the United States of America,” bin Salman told Bloomberg in an exclusive interview late Friday.

Last week, US President Donald Trump said the Saudi King would not last for two weeks in power without US military support.

But bin Salman downplayed Trump’s remarks, saying “you have to accept that any friend will say good things and bad things”.

“So you cannot have 100 per cent friends saying good things about you, even in your family. You will have some misunderstandings. So we put that in that category,” he said.

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The Crown Prince said Riyadh has paid for all weapons bought from the US.

“We will pay nothing for our security. We believe that all the armaments we have from the United States of America are paid for, it’s not free armament,” he said.

“Ever since the relationship started between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, we’ve bought everything with money.”

He stressed that Saudi-US relations were good, saying “If you look at the picture overall, you have 99 per cent of good things and one bad issue.”

Saudi attracts US attention by singing Israel’s tunes – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

“We hope it will end as soon as possible. We don’t need that on our border,” he said.

“We don’t need to have a new Hezbollah in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a red line not only for Saudi Arabia but for the whole world. No one wants to have Hezbollah in a straight through which about 15 per cent of the world trade goes through. We will continue to pressure them.

“We hope they’ll get ready as soon as possible to have negotiations and to have a deal,” bin Salman said.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and several Arab allies launched a massive air campaign against Shia Houthi rebels, who have overrun much of Yemen, including capital Sanaa, a year earlier.

The ongoing violence has devastated Yemen’s basic infrastructure, prompting the UN to describe the situation as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times”.

War in Yemen – Cartoon [Cartoon Latuff/MiddleEastMonitor]