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The US has agreed to sell high-end fighter jets, helicopters, radar and missiles to Saudi Arabia. The deal is one of the biggest single US arms deals ever. Mouin Rabbani, independent writer and analyst, sees the deal as a way of "solidifying the strategic alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia" with the "underlying message" that "Iran will not be able to attack Saudi Arabia without eliciting an American response."

But Rabbani does not see the arms deal itself fulfilling Saudi defense needs. "I think with all due respect that the people who try to understand the arms purchase on the basis of Saudi military needs fundamentally misunderstand" the situation, he said. "Any military objective is entirely secondary. What this is really about is to buy regime security. Military acquisitions are an important way of recycling petrodollars."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/saudi-arabia/101022/why-saudi-arabia-stockpiling-us-weapons