Money is Riyadh’s weapon of choice when it engages with the outside world on controversial issues. When Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, was in London recently, he urged the UK to continue supporting his country in Yemen to prevent if ‘from becoming a terrorist state under Iran-backed Houthis’. As a carrot, he told the British government that the Saudi Vision 2030 plan contained projects worth two trillion dollars, and that cooperation between the two countries would take their relationship ‘to another level’. Bribes are seldom promised as openly as this.