Amid its war on Iran — now frozen by a tenuous ceasefire — the Trump administration has been exploiting emergency waivers to fast-track controversial foreign arms sales to Israel and Gulf states, tossing Congressional oversight to the wayside.
On March 6, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked the Arms Export Control Act’s emergency waiver provision to bypass Congressional review of a nearly $660 million weapons sale to Israel — citing the existence of “an emergency… that requires the immediate sale.” Two weeks later, the State Department similarly skipped over Congress and approved at least $16.5 billion in potential weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan and Kuwait for various missiles and weapons systems.
The Trump administration justifies these emergency waivers on the grounds that U.S. strategic partners urgently need these capabilities. But experts stress they could erode critical Congressional oversight over foreign arms sales — a sensitive matter given that such weapons, in the wrong hands, can be used to fuel and prolong conflict, and carry out human rights abuses.
The growing practice
The U.S. war on Iran is not the first time the waivers, which allow a foreign arms sale to bypass the 15-30 day period granted for Congressional review, have been used. Back in 2019, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo controversially waived the congressional review window for arms sales to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, contending that “Iranian aggression” and “increasing regional volatility” in the Middle East made it necessary to do so.
The practice has become more frequent since, spanning administrations. The Biden administration expedited U.S. weapons sales to Ukraine, amid conflict there in 2022 and 2024 , and also to Israel in late 2023 for its war on Gaza.
While these emergency waivers are intended to fast track arms to U.S. partners during crises, their repeated invocation — amid a conflict the U.S. has helped provoke — leads experts to wonder if the Administration is trying to normalize the use of the exceptional practice, as a means to sap Congressional oversight from foreign arms sales.
“A war or a crisis is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to justify the use of this emergency authority,” Elias Yousif, the deputy director of the Conventional Defense Program at the Stimson Center, told RS. “What [we] see now is a much more routine use of the [emergency waiver] authority, which begs the question: are there simply more emergencies, or are we normalizing this extraordinary power?”
Officials contend that the arms transfers are an urgent matter, but many of these weapons will not reach their intended destinations anytime soon. As Rep. Gregory Meeks (D- N.Y.) observes in a recent statement, only one of the handful of defense articles to be sent to the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan, is currently available for export. Nearly all the State Department sales announcements likewise indicate that defense contractors still have to produce the arms to be sent — although some bombs sent to Israel will “be transferred from stock.” Given the extended timelines of weapons manufacturing, the decision to forego a 15-30 day waiting period suggests “this is about avoiding scrutiny, rather than addressing the risks faced by allies and partners in the region,” Yousif said.
William Hartung of the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS, contends the long-term goal may be to use the war to “establish a new standard, where they just ignore Congress whenever possible.”
Push for oversight
Lawmakers warn that, by sidestepping Congress, the administration is greenlighting arms sales that could fuel conflict, and in some cases enable war crimes.
In a press release, Meeks underscored the humanitarian risks of selling weapons to the UAE, which arms the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a paramilitary force perpetrating human rights abuses in Sudan’s Darfur region .
“This arms transfer reflects a broader pattern: ignoring the law, bypassing Congress, and making major national security decisions without transparency or accountability,” Meeks said.
Lawmakers have expressed particular frustration over U.S. arms sales to Israel, which, amid a shaky truce with Iran, continues to attack Lebanon . Israel has also continued to break the ceasefire in Gaza, where it has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Aiming to block the waived-through March Israel arms sales, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has filed three Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) ; he is slated to force votes on them sometime after Congress returns from recess.
“Given the horrific destruction that Israel’s extremist government has wrought on Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, the last thing in the world that American taxpayers need to do right now is to provide 22,000 new bombs to the Netanyahu government,” Sen. Sanders said . “No more weapons to support an illegal war.”
“Trump not only disregarded Congressional authority to declare this war, he’s now bypassing Congress by invoking an emergency authority to supply additional bombs to this war, a crisis of his own making,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who cosponsors Sanders’ JRDs, said . Further adding to their frustrations is the fact that the sales to Israel will be funded with Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a U.S. military aid program that gives Israel more than $3.3 billion to use toward its military capacities each year — meaning U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill.
Congress has yet to successfully block a proposed foreign arms sale with a Joint Resolution of Disapproval. As an advocate who engages lawmakers on issues related to the war on Iran told RS on the condition of anonymity, Sen. Sanders’ JRDs are also unlikely to pass due to Republican lawmakers’ opposition to them; however, the legislation helps reassert the importance of congressional oversight over controversial foreign arms sales.