In the context of the security crisis in the Middle East since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Berlin has decided to review its military doctrine vis-à-vis Riyadh. The German government said Wednesday it had approved a sale of missiles to Saudi Arabia, lifting a long-standing embargo on arms exports to Riyadh.
Chancellor’s spokesperson Olaf Scholz confirmed to the press the green light given at the end of 2023 for a delivery of Iris-T missiles. The information was revealed by the magazine Spiegel while Berlin had frozen arms sales to Riyadh since the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the end of 2018. “I can confirm this article,” said Steffen Hebestreit.
Sale of 150 missiles
The authorization given by the Federal Security Council concerns the sale of 150 guided missiles of the “air-air” type, that is to say fired in flight from an aircraft, with the aim of destroying an aerial target.
On Sunday, the German Foreign Minister had already announced during a trip to Israel that Germany would no longer oppose the sale of Eurofighter planes to Saudi Arabia as part of a contract negotiated by the Kingdom -United and which Berlin had blocked for several years.
Under the embargo decided in 2018, Germany blocked both direct military exports to Saudi Arabia and those of components as part of joint arms programs with allies, as is the case with Eurofighter, project carried out with France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain. The German embargo decided under the mandate of former Chancellor Angela Merkel was anchored in the contract of the SPD-Green-Liberal coalition of Olaf Scholz, in power since the end of 2021, which also criticized Saudi Arabia for its role in the war in Yemen and human rights abuses.
Disgruntled environmentalists
To explain this turnaround, the government notably affirmed that Riyadh had adopted a “constructive” attitude in the war between Israel and Hamas, contributing “in a decisive way” to the security of Israel and to stemming the risk of a regional conflagration. .
But among environmentalists, this change of direction is widely criticized. While recognizing that the international situation has changed since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the vice-president of the Green parliamentary group Agnieszka Brugger warned in the newspaper Spiegel : “Decisions related to major threats must not be guided only by short-term considerations, but also by long-term security policy and human rights considerations.” Some members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) also spoke out against this new line.