Nick Schifrin:

Right.

So these are arms sales that had been blocked for months by the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez of New Jersey. What he had said is that he was worried that Saudi Arabia would use these weapons in Yemen.

Yemen, there are Houthi rebels who are fighting Saudi Arabia and backed by Iran, but there are also tens of thousands of civilians who have been caught up in that war and who have been casualties in that war, mostly because of these bombs dropped by the Saudi-led coalition.

Now, what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said today, he said, no, there's an emergency and that we had to — quote — "deter the malign influence of Iran," go around that block and sell these arms to Congress.

Those who support these sales say, look, if we sell these weapons to Saudi Arabia, they will get better at targeting their targets in Yemen, and therefore will avoid civilian casualties. But the critics say, wait a minute, Saudi Arabia has already had these weapons. We're just replenishing more of them, and more civilians will die.

And that's what we saw from Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut in a statement this afternoon. He said: "President Trump is only using this loophole because he knows Congress would disapprove of the sale. There is no new emergency reason to sell bombs to the Saudis to drop in Yemen. And doing so will only perpetuate the humanitarian crisis there." And he added: "This sets an incredibly dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to sell weapons without a check from Congress."

So, bottom line, we see two decisions, deployments to the Middle East and also arms sales from offices, by the way, that aren't not usually coordinated, and that are not connected. But the administration made these two announcements almost simultaneously to make the point, we are going to continue to confront Iran. They say it's effective deterrence.

Critics say this is going to increase the chances of conflict.