The Biden administration is lifting its years-long suspension of offensive arms shipments to Saudi Arabia, authorizing an initial shipment of air-to-ground munitions and saying it would consider additional new transfers “on a typical case-by-case basis,” according to senior administration officials.

       The sale of certain classes of offensive weapons was frozen in early 2021 to signal administration disapproval of the Saudi war with Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen and strikes against civilian targets there. Since a United Nations-mediated truce in the spring of 2022, “there has not been a single Saudi airstrike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped,” a senior official said.