During US President Bush’s visit here this week, it was announced that the White House had notified the US Congress of plans to provide Saudi Arabia with $123-million worth of sophisticated precision-guided bomb technology. The deal is part of a bigger $20 billion arms package to help bolster the defense capabilities not just of the Kingdom but of other GCC states as well.

There is nothing particularly revealing or new about the announcement. The arms package was unveiled months ago and the White House has already notified Congress of five other elements to it. The announcement of this latest one was simply timed to dress up the president’s presence and fits in with the protocol of contract announcements that usually accompany such high level visits.

However, there are various aspects that cannot be allowed to pass without comment.

The first is the way in which the deal is being presented by the Americans — as if the Bush administration is doing Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE and Kuwait, a immense favor by providing us with the equipment and that we should be grateful. The suggestion is that the White House will stand up for the Saudis and its other GCC allies against an anti-Saudi Democrat majority in Congress intent on scuppering the deal.

But this is purely a commercial deal. The US is not giving the arms away. Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE and Kuwait, is paying for them — and paying handsomely. There is no reason to be grateful at all. The Americans are making a great deal of money from the sales. The Russians or the Europeans would have been delighted to have won the contracts for some of the equipment. If anything, it is the US that should be grateful for the $20 billion it is going to earn.

Secondly, the Democrat-controlled Congress did not block the first five elements of the deal and is not going to block this latest one even if a handful of Democratic representatives voice their opposition for their own political purposes. The Democrats, for whom support for Israel is almost an article of faith (unlike the Republicans who support Israel largely for strategic reasons), have been convinced by guarantees from the White House that Israel will always have the military edge in the Middle East.

There lies the third — and main — point of discomfort. There is a conflict of interests in Washington’s arms policies in the Middle East. The US sells arms to both sides, to Arabs and to Israelis alike, but always making sure, as the White House quite candidly pointed out during the presidential tour, that the Israelis stay ahead of the game.

Who gains? Apart from obviously the Israelis who effectively get their arms free thanks to massive US aid, the answer is the American arms industry. They are minting money. But the Middle East, awash with US arms, remains in crisis.