Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government imposed a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018. It then granted a conditional exception for systems developed jointly with countries.
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The announcement of the Iris-T export license comes after Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday that Germany was ready to deliver more Eurofighter jets, manufactured through a multinational consortium in which Berlin participates, to Saudi Arabia. This is the current German legislature, which will end in autumn 2025.
A Eurofighter from the German Air Force Weapons School takes off for training in Large, Germany, April 30, 2021. The German government has approved the export of air defense missiles to Saudi Arabia, highlighting a softening of its hard line in recent years toward arms exports to the kingdom. (Bernd Wuestneck/dpa AP, File)
In their coalition agreement in late 2021, the current governing parties said that they wouldn’t approve weapons exports to countries that are “demonstrably directly involved in the war in Yemen.”
Hebestreit said on Monday that Scholz shared Baerbock’s position. He said the government had reassessed the effect of the “Yemen clause” on Saudi Arabia in light of progress in that conflict.
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He also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s “very constructive stance” toward Israel after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and said the Saudi Air Force had shot down missiles fired toward Israel through Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
For months there has been an attempted ceasefire between the Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of Yemen’s government-in-exile, despite the country’s long war.