The U.S. State Department said on Friday it has approved a \u200bsale worth $151.8 million to Israel for munitions and munitions support, without submitting it for \u200bcongressional review. U.S. Secretary of State Marco \u2060Rubio determined an emergency existed that required an immediate sale to Israel, the State Department said, with the announcement \u200bcoming a week after \u200cthe U.S. and Israel started their attacks on Iran. Israel had requested 12,000 BLU-110A\/B general purpose, 1,000-pound bomb bodies, the State Department said in a statement. The principal \u200bcontractor will be Repkon USA, located in Texas, it said. The State Department said on Friday that Rubio had determined that the sale is “in the national security interests of the United States.” Democratic U.S. \u200cRepresentative Gregory Meeks \u200csaid Rubio’s decision to use \u200bemergency authority to bypass congressional review showed a lack of preparation for the war on Iran. “The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted
it was fully prepared for this war. Rushing to invoke emergency authority to circumvent Congress tells a different story. This is \u200ban emergency of the Trump administration’s own creation,” Meeks said in a statement. The U.S. and Israel launched an air assault on Iran on February 28 and Iran responded with its own attacks in \u200bIsrael and regional countries with U.S. bases. In the last week, U.S. and Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and thousands more have been wounded, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador. Many top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have also been killed. The U.S. military has said six U.S. \u200cservice members were killed in a strike on a Kuwait facility, while Israel has said at least 10 civilians have been killed across Israel so far. Washington has maintained strong support for \u2060Israel under President Donald Trump and \u200bformer President Joe Biden during the more than two years of Israeli wars in Gaza, Lebanon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. State Department said on Friday it has approved a \u200bsale worth $151.8 million to Israel for munitions and munitions support, without submitting it for \u200bcongressional review. U.S. Secretary of State Marco \u2060Rubio determined an emergency existed that required an immediate sale to Israel, the State Department said, with the announcement \u200bcoming a week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n