WikiLeaks Revelations
Create Problems
Tensions in the Middle East are increasing as the fallout from the
latest WikiLeaks revelations spreads. Previously reticent Arab
states have been exposed as having discussed strikes on Iran with
the U.S.
Hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. Embassy dispatches and
documents, made public by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks on
Sunday, included transcripts of conversations between Middle Eastern
leaders and U.S. diplomats and military officials.
The documents show the level of concern within the Middle East of
Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, contrary to the public declarations of a
number of Arab states, the apparent willingness to deal with the threat
militarily. …
A particular danger to stability now lies in the perception that Arab
states named in the documents are on the same page as the U.S. and
Israel in regard to policy toward Iran. [Mehrdad Khonsari, senior research
consultant at the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies in London,
said that the Iranians] “know how the Saudis as well as all the other
Arabs feel about them. But the fact that these disclosures have become
public is an embarrassment for the Saudis in their future dealings with
Iran and a reminder to them of what the Iranians have been saying that
you can never trust the Americans.”
However, while Iran may not be shocked into action by the revelations,
factions within Saudi Arabia may be. There is an escalating unease
in the kingdom itself over its allegiance to the United States, and
its willingness to support the U.S. and even join in with any military
action it mounts against Iran.
Outwardly, the Saudis have been telling the United States that under
no circumstances should it bomb Iran, or allow Israel to do so. Riyadh
has publicly told the U.S. that Saudi Arabia and its neighbors would not
support such actions, that U.S. support in the region would evaporate
if it attacked Iran and that Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich allies would not
make up any shortfall of crude production which would follow a U.S.
strike on Iran, opec’s second-highest oil producer behind the Saudis.
The WikiLeaks’ documents appear to contradict these public statements,
a situation that may anger factions within Saudi Arabia. …
[Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at the London School of
Economics and Political Science, told Deutsche Welle,] “Iran could use


the revelations to signify that the gloves are now off, and ratchet up its
overt and covert activities, including the presumed existence of sleeper
cells in Saudi Arabia and throughout the gcc which could be activated
to sow political and regional instability.” … A Saudi kingdom in chaos
would be hugely destabilizing to the wider region, not to mention the
world’s oil industry. …