Gulf war cries over Iran exaggerated
By Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The dominant theme that emerged in United States media coverage of
the first round of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables last week was that Arab regimes
in the Gulf - led by Saudi Arabia - shared Israel's view that Iran's nuclear
program had to be stopped, by military force if necessary.
The New York Times generated that narrative with a front-page story featuring
an alleged quote by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia urging the US
to "cut off the head of the snake", as well as other statements by Gulf Arab
leaders suggesting support for military action.
"The cables reveal how Iran's ascent has unified Israel and many
longtime Arab adversaries -notably the Saudis - in a common cause," the Times
asserted.
The notion that these leaders, like Israel, favor a military solution to Iran's
nuclear program has become widely accepted by the news media in the past week.
In a curtain-raiser to this week's talks in Geneva between Iran and the world's
most powerful nations, for example, the Washington Post on Monday asserted that
the WikiLeaks disclosure "show[ed] that Persian Gulf leaders have pressed for a
military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities."
But a careful reading of all the diplomatic cables reporting the views of Saudi
and other Gulf Arab regimes on Iran shows that the Times' account seriously
distorted the content - and in the case of the Saudis, ignored the context - of
the cables released by WikiLeaks.
The original Times story, headlined "From Arabs and Israelis, Sharp Distress
Over a Nuclear Iran", referred to "a largely silent front of Arab states whose
position on sanctions and force looked much like the Israelis".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his US neo-conservative backers
immediately seized on the story as confirmation of what Israel has been saying
all along.
In fact, the cables show that most Gulf Arab regimes - including Saudi Arabia
itself - have been seriously concerned about the consequences of a strike
against Iran for their own security, in sharp contrast to Israel's open
advocacy of such a strike. They also show the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and
Kuwait expressing that concern with greater urgency in the past two years than
previously.
Those facts were completely ignored, however, in the Times' account.
The Abdullah quote
The most widely cited quote in support of the Times' thesis since the story's
publication one week ago has been Abdullah's appeals to "cut off the head of
the snake", referring to Iran. The story asserted that the Saudi ambassador in
Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, had recalled the king's "frequent exhortations to
the US to attack Iran" during an April 2008 meeting with General David
Petraeus, the incoming chief of the US Central Command (CENTCOM).
The implication was that al-Jubeir had made that statement during the
Petraeus-Abdullah meeting. But the reporting cable makes it clear that the
Saudi ambassador made the remark two days later, in a conversation with the US
deputy chief of mission in Riyadh, Michael Gfoeller.
In his meeting with Petraeus, in fact, Abdullah had not spoken about Iran's
nuclear program, but focused instead on the importance of "resisting and
rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq", according to the cable.
The cable actually draws a contrast between al-Jubeir's remarks and those made
by Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and director general of intelligence
Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz during Petraeus' visit. "On the other hand," it
states after citing al-Jubeir's position, the foreign minister "called instead
for much more severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel
ban and further restrictions on bank lending". Muqrin "echoed these views",
according to the cable.
The foreign minister would only say that "the use of military pressure against
Iran should not be ruled out", the cable said. That statement mirrored
precisely the official position of the George W Bush administration at the
time.
Even if Abdullah had in fact offered explicit support for a military attack
against Iran in the meeting with Petraeus, however, that would not be a
reliable indicator of Saudi policy on the issue, according to Chas Freeman, a
veteran diplomat who served as Washington's ambassador to Saudi Arabia from
1989 to 1992 and maintains contact with top Saudi officials.
Freeman told the Inter Press Service (IPS) that such a statement would "fit a
pattern of communication with the United States of ingratiating themselves with
their protector".
Significantly, in that respect, the Abdullah-Petraeus meeting came three months
after Bush had visited Riyadh seeking support for a more confrontational stance
against Iran; five weeks after Petraeus' predecessor at CENTCOM, Admiral
William Fallon, had been fired in part for public statements that there would
be no war against Iran; and less than a month after then vice president Dick
Cheney had reportedly sought support for military action during his own visit
to the kingdom.
Thomas Lippman, the former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and an
adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, who has written a book on
Saudi-US relations, also said that the Abdullah quote would have been in line
with the usual Saudi pattern of "telling the Americans what they wanted to
hear".
"They wanted to be assured that they would be under the protection of the US,"
Lippman told IPS.
In fact, the cables covering the period since President Barack Obama took
office suggest that Saudi views have given even greater emphasis to political
and economic strategies in dealing with Iran than was the case in 2008.
A February 10, 2010, cable from Riyadh, for example, reported that Abdullah,
disillusioned with US blunders in Iraq that have given Iran the upper hand
there, "had concluded that he needs to proceed with his strategy to counter
Iranian influence in the region".
The new Saudi strategy, according to the cable, features promoting
reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority combined with
expanding relations with Russia, China and India to create "diplomatic and
economic pressure[s] on Iran that do not directly depend on US help".
UAE worries about 'pre-emptive strike'
As for the UAE, the Times' account of the cables suggested an evolution in its
thinking from earlier warnings that a US or Israeli military strike would be
"catastrophic" to a far more hawkish position. In February 2007, a cable quotes
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, as saying that the
Iranian nuclear program "must be stopped by all means available".
That exhortation, however, was put in a different context by the diplomat who
reported on his conversation with bin Zayed, who also serves as deputy supreme
commander of the UAE armed forces.
The diplomat noted that such "tough talk on Iran" should be "taken in the
context of strong UAE interest in acquiring advanced military technology".
Indeed, the UAE at the time was negotiating agreements to buy a record US$17
billion in US arms over the next several years.
Despite bin Zayed's bluster, the US diplomat wrote in the February 7, 2007
cable that the UAE "is clearly nervous about any US actions that could upset
their much larger and militarily superior neighbor".
Indeed, two years later, the crown prince told visiting US special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke that a "military
solution would only delay [Iran's nuclear] program, not derail it" and that
"war with Iran would only harm the UAE". He also said he was "deeply concerned"
over a possible Israeli military strike which, he added, "would have little
impact on Iran's capabilities", according to an April 5, 2009, cable.
He repeated his concerns about an Israeli attack to other high-ranking US
visitors three months later. After a July 15 meeting between bin Zayed and
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the embassy reported: "Without timely and
decisive action by the United States, MbZ believes Israel will strike Iran,
causing Iran to launch missile attacks - including hits on the UAE - and to
unleash terror attacks worldwide." He then suggested that "the key to
containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue".
According to a July 23, 2009, cable, the prince subsequently declared to
visiting senior State Department officials that "[Iranian President Mahmud]
Ahmadinejad is Hitler" - a remark highlighted in the Times' account that has
also gained widespread media attention.
But the cable reported further expressions of alarm over the prospect and
possible consequences of an Israeli pre-emptive strike. The prince called for
Washington to immediately begin "joint planning" with the UAE to address such a
"worst-case scenario".
Most recently, a February 22, 2010 cable has UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh
Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nayan warning a visiting delegation headed by Nita Lowey,
a strong supporter of Israel in the US Congress, that any "crisis or
confrontation in the region [over Iran's nuclear program] would create oil
supply problems worldwide".
According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a "soliloquy on the
importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as
perhaps the best way of reducing Iran's regional influence".
'Iran has not bothered us'
While confirming growing Arab fears about Iran's regional clout and nuclear
ambitions, the cables suggest that other Gulf Arab leaders - with the possible
exception of Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, the only regional leader
with a majority Shi'ite population - have little or no appetite for military
action against Iran.
"A year or two ago, many in Kuwait hoped a silent, targeted strike would take
out the troublesome reactor and leave the region more relaxed," a cable quotes
a senior Foreign Ministry official who also happens to be the son of Kuwait's
prime minister as recalling to his US interlocutor last February.
"Now, however, they feared that any effort to disrupt the nuclear program,
either military or through tough sanctions 'would go badly for the West',"
according to the cable, which quotes another official as saying that, while the
emirate was worried about Iran's nuclear program, it was "equally concerned
about military preemption" and the retaliation that was likely to follow.
Qatar, meanwhile, is unwilling to "provoke a fight" with Iran, according to the
emir of Qatar, as reported in a February 2010 cable on a meeting between the
emir and US Senator John Kerry. The emir explained that Doha would not "provoke
a fight" with Iran, because its primary interest was a natural-gas field it
shared with Tehran. He added that Iran "has not bothered us" during the history
of relations between the two states.
A February 2, 2010 cable makes it clear that the sultan of Oman, who has given
the US access to three military bases on its territory, is determined to
maintain balance between Washington and Tehran. The cable reported that Muscat
had twice rejected official US offers to include it in a collective missile
defense system aimed at Iran in 2009.
As for Bahrain, the Gulf's only Shi'ite-majority sheikhdom and host of the US
5th Fleet, the Times quoted a November 2009 cable in which King Hamad declares
that Iran's nuclear "program must be stopped" and warns that "the danger of
letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it".
No other cable from Manama elaborates, however, on what means the US or other
countries should use to halt the program.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006. Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
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