Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said that without the United States, Persian Saudi Arabia would have spoken within a week, stressing that Riyadh needs Washington more than Washington needs.
"The Saudi army can not fight, and Saudi Arabia supplies the United States with only 9 percent of the total oil it imports," the Republican senator said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
As for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Graham said there was no senator briefed on the CIA briefing, which has little doubt that the Saudi crown prince was involved in his killing.
"Khashoggi was not targeted alone, others were arrested outside the country and taken into." They detained a prime minister, which is the strangest thing I have seen in 20 years. "
"I am concerned that if we give this person our weapons, he will give it to the Russians and the Chinese," he said.
He said that bin Salman put Jamal Khashoggi in his eyes for about two years, and who carried out the assassination are close to him, describing the Saudi Crown Prince as a "ball of destruction" and "a madman who killed Khashoggi brutally inside his consulate in Istanbul that he would survive."
"Washington's relationship with Saudi Arabia is strategic, but it can not be sustained at all costs," Graham said, adding that keeping ties with bin Salman "weakens our ability to manage the region."
Graham has said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is "a destructive force in the Middle East" and has caused great damage to the relationship between Washington and Riyadh.
In an earlier interview with NBC, Graham cited examples of what he called Mohammed bin Salman's "destructive" policies: a siege of Qatar without anyone's knowledge, a devastating war on Yemen, and the imposition of an al-Hariri arrest on Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.