Biden Admin Will Coordinate More Closely With Congress on Arms Transfers, Lawmaker Says

The Biden administration plans to coordinate more closely with Congress on U.S. weapons sales than the previous administration did, including on potentially controversial exports to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, said Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Closer coordination on weapons sales would be a departure from some sales under the Trump administration, which was criticized by House and Senate Democrats for stonewalling congressional oversight of emergency arms transfers (see 2008110027).

The Biden administration has “indicated” that “before they go selling some of the aggressive weapons,” they will “come to Congress, let us do what our jurisdiction demands that we do,” Meeks said during a Feb. 24 event hosted by the Brookings Institution. The administration last month placed a freeze on certain pending arms sales, including purchases made by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as it determines whether to allow them to proceed.

“What I want to make sure that the administration doesn’t do is what the prior administration did do,” Meeks said, “and that's bypass Congress, especially when you're talking about the selling of weapons.” Meeks also said he hopes Biden will make it easier to ship humanitarian goods to certain countries that need food and medicine instead of solely focusing on arms exports. The White House didn’t comment.

Meeks also called on the administration to recruit allies to speak with Turkey about its purchases of Russian S-400 missile parts (see 1912270034) and to persuade the country against cooperating with Russia. “I'm a multilateralist. I don't believe in America alone. I don't believe in America First. I think that we've got to work collectively with our allies,” Meeks said. “That's how I want to deal with Turkey also.”

A bigger challenge, Meeks said, is deciding how to handle Iranian sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (see 2101280043). He praised the administration's plan to meet with allies about how to rejoin the deal (see 2102220049) but said the JCPOA is still strongly opposed by some Republicans. Meeks said he has spoken about Iran with Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but said the two don’t yet agree on the best path forward. “It's more difficult trying to figure out how we deal with Iran,” he said. “This is something that we've got to deal with, and we're not quite there together at this particular point.”