CNN reports citing two defence officials that 500 troops will be sent to the Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, a closed-city. The base is located in a desert area east of Riyadh and is believed to be difficult for Tehran missiles to target. A formal announcement to Congress is expected to be made sometime next week.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project, studied high-resolution satellite images taken at the base in June.
He said: “A small encampment and construction equipment appeared at the end of a runway by June 27, suggesting that improvements are already underway.
“The encampment to the east of the runway is typical of Air Force engineering squadrons deployed overseas.”
Riyadh is known to be sensitive about discussing US troops in Saudi Arabia and thus neither they nor Washington have commented on deployments.
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The Saudi Arabian authorities are not believed to have even announced the development.
In May, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that despite tensions over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Washington was selling $8.1billion (£6.5million) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia: “These sales will support our allies, enhance Middle East stability, and help these nations to deter and defend themselves from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The deal bought condemnation from some in Congress, with Ted Lieu, a Democratic representative saying: “The emergency declaration is nothing more than an egregious abuse of power by an Administration that doesn’t like being told, ‘No.’ There is no emergency, but there is a conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians with US-made weapons and a Congress that is tired of being complicit.”
Washington and Riyadh have long been key allies with King Fahd approving 543,000 American troops being sent into the country during the Gulf War.
Riyadh and Tehran currently have no diplomatic relations following an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran by mobsters and the execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Minr al-Nimr in Riyadh at the beginning of 2016.
Tehran, which is governed under a Shiite theocracy as opposed to Riyadh’s Sunnite theocracy began to openly attack Riyadh and the legitimacy of the Al Saud family following the Islamic Revolution.
The two have been considered to have spent four decades engaged in proxy conflicts with major proxy locations being Yemen, Qatar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Nigeria.
At the end of 1979, months after Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Iranian regime, armed civilians seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca with the intention of overthrowing the House of Saud.
The seizure lasted about six weeks and with support from Pakistan, France and Jordan, Riyadh killed 117 militants and would execute 68 of them.
The seizure resulted in King Khaled implementing stricter enforcement of Shariah law, but Ayatollah Khomeini claimed the events were a result of “criminal American imperialism and international Zionism” which resulted in demonstrations outside various US embassies in the Middle East and Asia.