As hundreds of millions of young Arabs watch the world around them, they see the Saudis ordering a thousand lashes and ten years in prison for a blogger who encouraged online debate about religious and political issues... They see a mass murderer running what little is left of Syria, using barrel bombs and chemical weapons against his own people. And what are the Western powers doing? Next to nothing. 

Months after the Saudi government pledged to single-handedly meet the United Nations’ (UN) “flash appeal” for humanitarian aid to Yemen, Riyadh is making it clear that the donation doesn’t come without strings attached.

On April 12, as the Saudi-led air campaign rained bombs over Yemen, the UN issued an emergency flash appeal calling for $274 million in aid for the country to address the increasingly dire humanitarian condition. Less than 24 hours later, the call was met entirely by the very government that was leading the attacks against Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s willingness to wield its oil money on the global diplomatic stage appears to have been laid bare, after the website WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of leaked cables from Riyadh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. WikiLeaks has not revealed its source, but a group calling itself the "Yemen cyber army" has claimed it hacked government servers.

In one of the most conservative and secretive kingdoms on Earth, the leak of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables has caused shockwaves in Riyadh.

Before becoming the president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi wanted visas to take his family on a religious pilgrimage. A Lebanese politician begged for cash to pay his bodyguards.

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Saudi Arabia's new foreign minister, a US-educated connoisseur of Washington's diplomatic scene and longtime adviser to the Kingdom's rulers, is an articulate spokesman for his country's new assertive approach to the Middle East's growing conflicts.

A senior Iranian official says Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen and its prevention of the delivery of the Islamic Republic’s humanitarian aid to the war-wracked country will not go unanswered. “We consider all options for helping the Yemeni people and immediate dispatch of humanitarian aid and transfer of the injured,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday.