According to military press reports, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has ranked Saudi Arabia as the fifth-biggest military spender globally in 2023. This development highlights the magnitude of the economic damage that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) has caused the nation.
It is worth noting that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expends 75 billion US dollars a year on armaments and military readiness, or 7.1% of its GDP.
CNN reported that the total amount spent by Middle Eastern nations on armaments in 2022 was estimated to have reached 184 billion US dollars. The agency attributed this increase in spending by Middle Eastern nations to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which ranked first in the Middle East and fifth globally for its military spending budget.
Additionally, according to BBC Arabic, the Kingdom spent more money on the war in Yemen than it had anticipated because of the war that Bin Salman had dragged the country into. Despite this, the Kingdom’s spending in 2018 was the highest in the Arab world and the fifth-highest overall, coming in at 86 billion US dollars in 2018 and 81 billion US dollars in 2019 before beginning to decline with the truce agreements between the Kingdom and the Houthis.
It is noteworthy that the Wall Street Journal reports that the Saudi war on Yemen has cost the Kingdom’s treasury 350 billion US dollars, or one trillion and 300 billion Saudi riyals.
According to reports, the Kingdom lost $230 billion a month on aircraft used only to bomb Yemen during its Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthi group.
According to the institute’s report, the war waged by the Israeli occupation on Gaza is also to blame for the increase in the value of armaments in Middle Eastern countries. Israel’s military expenditures in Gaza amounted to 200 billion US dollars, which is equivalent to a 24 percent increase over the country’s previous armaments expenditures. This means that military expenditures on weapons and equipment have reached their highest level in ten years.
It is important to note that military media agencies varied in their assessments of the losses incurred by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the conflict that began when MBS entered the country alongside the Houthis and ended when the Houthis gained control over the country and undermined Yemeni legitimacy. While some agencies reported that the war cost $504 billion, others claimed that the Kingdom spent $725 billion on the conflict both domestically and internationally.
Analysts said that the money MBS would have spent on his imaginary projects that did not benefit the kingdom would not have helped Saudi reality in the slightest. Regardless of the amount of money the Kingdom lost in the war, it is still a significant amount that could have transformed the country and helped generations of unemployed people.
