Half of U.S. arms exports in past five years went to Mideast: SIPRI

Significant increase is witnessed in arms exports from the United States in the past five years, and half of U.S. arms exports went to the Middle East, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report on Monday.

Between 2010 to 2014 and 2015 to 2019, exports of major arms from the U.S. -- the world's largest arms exporter -- grew by 23 percent, raising its share of total global arms exports to 36 percent. In 2015 to 2019 total U.S. arms exports were 76 percent higher than those from Russia, the world's second largest arms exporter. Major arms transferred from the U.S. went to a total of 96 countries and regions, said the SIPRI report.

"Half of U.S. arms exports in the past five years went to the Middle East, and half of those went to Saudi Arabia," Pieter D. Wezeman, senior researcher at SIPRI, said in the report.

While international transfers of major arms from 2015 to 2019 increased by 5.5 percent compared with the 2010 to 2014 period, the new data shows that the flow of arms to the Middle East has increased, with Saudi Arabia being the world's largest arms importer, the report noted.

From 2015 to 2019, Saudi Arabia's imports of major arms increased by 130 percent compared with the previous five-year period, accounting for 12 percent of global arms imports in the period. Arms imports by countries in the Middle East increased by 61 percent between 2010 to 2014 and 2015 to 2019, accounting for 35 percent of total global arms imports over the past five years, according to the report.

"Despite the wide-ranging concerns in the USA and the United Kingdom about Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen, both the USA and the UK continued to export arms to Saudi Arabia in 2015-2019. A total of 73 percent of Saudi Arabia's arms imports came from the USA and 13 percent from the UK," said the report.

SIPRI's research covers international conflicts, armaments, arms control and disarmament.