Batoul Wehbe - Al-ManarBut why the leaked documents are only embroiling the US - with its relations with Israel falling back lately under Obama’s administration, and some Israel’s Middleast allies whose ties had become strained?
News websites Sunday and Monday reported the leaked information as including: Arab leaders privately urging an air strike on Iran, US officials being instructed to spy on the United Nation's leadership and other “terror groups”, Iran using ambulances to aid Hezbollah, Israel consulting the Palestinian authority and Egypt on Gaza takeover, and several other scandals some published others not serving maybe an Israeli plot against the US and its allies in the region.
The hundreds of thousands of documents made public by the WikiLeaks website revealed the enormous pressure Israel and Arab countries put on the United States to pursue military action against Iran, however some of the papers could also explain why Washington avoided an attack. WikiLeaks published more 250,000 confidential cables, releasing them to the Spanish daily El Pais, Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, France's Le Monde and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
S.A. TO US ON IRAN: CUT OFF THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE
In a major embarrassment to Saudi Arabia, US documents leaked by WikiLeaks said Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program. The king made the call during an April 2008 meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Petraeus. "He told you to 'cut off the head of the snake'," Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, told the US embassy in Riyadh two days after the high-level talks, according to the State Department memo. "The king, foreign minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq," the memo said. But the memo goes on to say other Saudi officials were more cautious about the need for military action, with Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abd al-Aziz pushing for sanctions.
Reacting to the leaks, a Saudi government advisor who asked not to be identified told AFP: "The whole thing is very negative. It's not good for confidence-building."
IRAN BETWEEN ISRAEL, US AND NKOREA
According to several documents, some elements in the White House and State Department believed Israel overestimated the Iranian nuclear program and that its evaluations should be taken "with a grain of salt. "
One of the documents shows that Mossad chief Meir Dagan told a US politician that nothing will stop Iran from going nuclear and that the facts on the matter are uncontested. The US Embassy in Israel also reported that in private talks that Israeli officials admitted that a strike on Iran would be much harder to carry out than the attack on the Iraqi reactor had been.
“US intelligence believes Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could strike Europe,” one US documents divulged by WikiLeaks said. The documents also show frustration among US diplomats who have been pressing for China to block shipments of missile parts from North Korea to Iran, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported. Iran obtained 19 of the North Korean missiles, an improved version of Russia's R-27, from North Korea, the cable said, and was "taking pains to master the technology in an attempt to build a new generation of missiles."
At the request of US President Barack Obama's administration, the New York Times said it had agreed not to publish the text of that cable.
WHAT ABOUT HEZBOLLAH?
According to a State department confidential cable, Washington requested intelligence on “terror” groups and supporters including al-Qaida and other Islamic groups such as Egypt's Jamaa Islamiya, Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah. It revealed that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered a probe on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as an investigation on possible ties between UN members and “terror” groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Some secret documents said that Iran used ambulances to smuggle weapons into Lebanon during the 2006 July war launched by Israel on Lebanon.
BARAK’S OFFER TO PA, EGYPT
And in major blow to Fatah and Egypt, US documents uncovered a plot from the two sides with the Zionist entity where Israel discussed its planned war on Gaza with the Palestinian leadership and Egypt ahead of time, offering to hand them control of the strip if it defeated Hamas. The attempt to coordinate its devastating offensive against Gaza was revealed by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak whose remarks were included in a telegram sent in June 2009 by then deputy US ambassador Luis Moreno.
ERDOGAN IN ISRAEL’S EYES
Another secret cable claimed that top diplomats in Ankara sees Turkey's prime minister a religious "fundamentalist" committed to spreading “hatred” against Israel. The dispatch by U.S Ambassador James Jeffrey details a conversation with his Israeli counterpart, Ambassador Gaby Levy and points to a shared assessment of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a demagogue whose policies are fueled by "hatred" rather than political calculations. "He's a fundamentalist. He hates us religious and his hatred is spreading," Levy is reported to have said.
In his cable to the State Department, Jeffrey agreed with the Israeli assessment. "Our discussions with contacts both inside and outside of the Turkish government on Turkey's deteriorating relations with Israel tend to confirm Levy's thesis that Erdogan simply hates Israel," he wrote.
Concerning Afghanistan, leaked US documents on Monday painted President Hamid Karzai's controversial younger brother as a corrupt drugs baron, exposing deep US concerns about graft undermining the war against the Afghan Taliban. Ahmed Wali Karzai has long been dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to Afghanistan's lucrative opium trade and private security firms. But as a powerful figure in Kandahar, Western officials have kept quiet in public on the president's younger half brother's tainted record.
However r in an analysis published by Veterans Today website Gordon Duff says that recent admissions that the Israeli lobby, AIPAC, routinely receives masses of classified information makes them suspect #1 for being the source of Wikileaks.
He indicates that Wikileaks is an intelligence operation to weaken and undermine the American government, orchestrated from Tel Aviv, using dozens of operatives, dual citizens, some at the highest authority levels, spies for Israel. “Through leaking carefully selected intelligence along with proven falsified documents, all fed to a controlled press, fully complicit, Wikileaks is, in fact, an act of war against the United States,” senior editor at Veterans Today says.
Duff describes Wikileaks as a “chickenfeed meant to cover Israel’s tail.” In his analysis he worders whether it is a coincidence that “documents regarding Israel, their spying, influence peddling, suspicions of complicity in terrorism, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, across Europe and even the Detroit bombing, those reports are there, they are classified but you will never see one on Wikileaks. In fact, they are the only classified information that never gets out to the news.”
AHMADINEJAD: WIKILEAKS, US-MADE LEAKS
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed WikiLeaks documents as "worthless" and "mischief" which would not affect Tehran's relations with its Arab neighbors. "These documents are prepared and released by the US government in a planned manner and in pursuance of an aim. It is part of an intelligence warfare and will not have their desired political impact. "We are friends with the regional countries and mischievous acts will not affect relations," he said.
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