THOM SHANKER published in the New York Times on August 26, 2012:
WASHINGTON — Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high, driven by major arms sales to Persian Gulf allies concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions, according to a new study for Congress.
GraphicThe American weapons sales total was an “extraordinary increase” of over the $21.4 billion in deals for 2010 and was the largest single-year sales total in the history of United States arms exports.
The previous high was in fiscal year 2009, when American weapons sales overseas totaled nearly $31 billion.
A worldwide economic decline had suppressed arms sales over recent years. But increasing tensions with Iran drove a set of Persian Gulf nations — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — to purchase American weapons at record levels.
These Gulf states do not share a border with Iran, and their arms purchases focused on expensive warplanes and complex missile defense systems.
The agreements with Saudi Arabia included the purchase of 84 advanced F-15 fighters, a variety of ammunition, missiles and logistics support, and upgrades of 70 of the F-15 fighters in the current fleet.
Sales to Saudi Arabia last year also included dozens of Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, all contributing to a total Saudi weapons deal from the United States of $33.4 billion, according to the study.
The United Arab Emirates purchased a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, an advanced antimissile shield that includes radars and is valued at $3.49 billion, as well as 16 Chinook helicopters for $939 million.
Oman bought 18 F-16 fighters for $1.4 billion.
In keeping with recent trends, most of the weapons purchases, worth about $71.5 billion, were made by developing nations, with about $56.3 billion of that from the United States.
Other significant weapons deals by the United States last year included a $4.1 billion agreement with India for 10 C-17 transport planes and with Taiwan for Patriot antimissile batteries valued at $2 billion — an arms deal that outraged officials in Beijing.
A policy goal of the United States has been to work with Arab allies in the Persian Gulf to knit together a regional missile defense system to protect cities, oil refineries, pipelines and military bases from an Iranian attack.
The effort has included deploying radars to increase the range of early warning coverage across the Persian Gulf, as well as introducing command, control and communications systems that could exchange that information with new batteries of missile interceptors sold to the individual nations.
The missile shield in the Persian Gulf is being built on a country-by-country basis — with these costly arms sales negotiated bilaterally between the United States and individual nations.
To compare weapons sales over various years, the study used figures in 2011 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted for inflation to provide a consistent measurement.
Note 1: The weapon purchases of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates are just tacit policies of warehousing weapon reserves for the US military in eventual emergency wars in the Middle-East, instead of planing for aerial bridges to transport expensive and heavy weapons. In any case, it is well-known that oil sales are reverted to the US treasury and for aiding in US covert operations not approved by Congress…Yearly astronomical deals so that the US guarantees the absolute obscurantist regimes in Saudi Arabia and the absolute Gulf Emirates
Note 2: After 4 decades, it is about time that the US desist sub-contructing its foreign policies in the Middle-East to Israel
Adonis Diaries 
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