WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism and a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Wednesday joined CNN International’s Connect the World with Becky Anderson to discuss re-evaluating the U.S-Saudi relationship.

On whether Saudi Arabia should still be considered an ally, Murphy said: “I’ve been arguing for the better part of the last decade that we should reorient our relationship with Saudi Arabia. For a long time, they were a very imperfect ally and I think we now have to ask ourselves whether they are an ally at all.”

Murphy continued: “We have looked the other way when it comes to their human rights abuses, their war in Yemen because we assumed when the chips were down, when there was a global emergency, the Saudis would choose to support us — not to support the Russians or the Chinese. And so, I think when a partner like this turns their back on you, you have to make decisions about whether you want to still be in the same kind of business…I just think it's time for us to figure out whether there’s a better way to deploy our defense assets, rather than using them to support a country that doesn’t seem to have our interests at heart.”

Murphy argued that the Saudis don’t make decisions on oil production independent of political motives: “The Saudis can’t separate the economics of oil from the politics of oil. They can’t do that because it is the economics of oil, it is the revenue from that oil that is allowing the Russians to perpetuate a campaign that is killing thousands of civilians inside of Ukraine. It is the revenue from that oil that has allowed for the Saudis to perpetuate a campaign inside Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians.”

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