Sex, Espionage, Bail, and Oh Yeah: War Crimes

Firstly, and as I've posted once or twice before, all of the cables are evidently authentic, that is, really
diplomatic cables sent by US embassies; BUT, this doesn't mean that they tell the truth. Those bearing any importance at all can consist of fabrications and misinterpretations, but can also be based on rumors and dvery incomplete truths.

Many people treat the cables as if they tell "Gospel Truth" and this is the [wrong] approach to the cables. Of those bearing what appears to be important information, plenty require very careful analysis and geopolitical knowledge.

HOWEVER, cables that do tell the truth on important subjects have been distorted by the "news" media, like the New York Times, f.e. The NYT evidently loves to distort what important cables related to Iran and its nuclear program actually say. Some articles linke further below will illustrate this.

People should [not] rely on interpretations and comments by the Guardian, UK, New York Times, et cetera. The following two articles provide a important general analysis and information useful for reading the cables and writing about them, but also useful in even more general terms.

"Who is Behind Wikileaks?"
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Dec. 13, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22389

The following is a lengthy essay and while I think it could've been shorter, it has a lot of substance. Part of it is basically as I stated at the start of this post.

"Wikileaks and the Worldwide Information War
Power, Propaganda, and the Global Political Awakening"

by Andrew Gavin Marshall, Dec. 6, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22278

Cable : "Saudi Arabia put pressure on the US to attack Iran. Other Arab allies also secretly agitated for military action against Tehran."

Is that really true and if it is, then how much of the full truth does the cable provide? Is there any covering up by omission(s)? If there are discernable or obvious falsehoods, then are these in what the cables actually say, or in what the NYT, et cetera, wrote about the related cables?

"Hawks Claim Vindication over WikiLeaks Cables
Docs Detail Hawks' Hostility Toward Iran"

by Jason Ditz, Nov. 29, 2010

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/29/hawks-claim-vindication-over-wikileak...

In a bizarre example of self-justification, a number of anti-Iran hawks are citing the WikiLeaks cables are vindication for their hostility toward Iran, purely on the basis of the documents repeating their own hostility toward the nation.

Somehow, the fact that the documents rehashed the long-standing Israeli calls to attack Iran made Israeli officials feel vindicated in those calls, and the fact that the Saudi King was making similar calls (linked) (for largely a different reason) may be interesting, but provides no proof that the threats were any wiser.

In fact, other documents on the Saudi government’s position suggest that, far from actually being concerned about Iran as a prospective nuclear power, the Saudis were more concerned that the US occupation of Iraq had turned the nation over to Shi’ite control (linked) and given the Shi’ite Iranians newfound power in the region. The Saudi King’s calls for attack seem to have been a pretty cynical attempt to strengthen the Sunni position in the region.

And though a number of the documents center around Iran’s nuclear program, none of them ever touches on or even implies the existence of any evidence that the program is military in nature. Indeed, their answer to public questions about the allegation by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was to warn his aides that he’d better stop asking such uncomfortable questions. (linked)

In the end it seems far from vindicating the hawks, the cables just name them, and far from making a good case for a war against Iran, they reveal US hostility over the idea that such a war might not be universally supported.

"Mideast Peace Key to Countering Iran, Arabs Told US Diplomats"
by Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib, Dec. 9, 2010

http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2010/12/08/mideast-peace-key-to-counter...

Gleeful Israeli leaders and their neoconservative supporters here have spent much of the past week insisting that the State Department cables published by WikiLeaks prove that Sunni Arab leaders in the Middle East are far more preoccupied with the threat posed by an ascendant and possibly nuclear Iran than with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But a closer look at the relevant cables shows a far more consistent message to Washington coming from its Arab allies: that curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked and that the most effective way of achieving the former is make tangible progress on the latter.

Indeed endorsements of "linkage" — the notion, accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. military, that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will help promote U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East — emerges as a recurring theme in previously confidential discussions with Arab leaders and U.S. diplomats on how best to counter Iran’s growing regional power and deter Tehran’s nuclear program.

That’s not the message, of course, that Israel and its backers have been touting since the first batch of 220 documents was released Nov. 29 by WikiLeaks.

Indeed, none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately seized on purported anti-Iranian comments by the Arab leaders quoted prominently in the New York Times as vindication of Israel’s position.

(snip)

That message was immediately echoed by neoconservative backers of Netanyahu’s Likud Party here for much of the past week.

(snip)

While that line has since been repeated continuously by neoconservative bloggers, columnists, and publications, they find little echo in the cables themselves.

"[T]he key to containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue," Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan told visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a Jul. 15, 2009 meeting, according to one cable dated five days later.

(snip)

Five months later, in a Dec. 9, 2009 meeting with Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, bin Zayed returned to that theme. ...

A May 27, 2008 cable describes a conversation between Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with Gamal Mubarak, son and heir apparent of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Asked by the congressman how best to counter Iran’s nuclear program, Mubarak replied, "Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan, are the ‘heavyweights’ that can counter Iran."

The cable goes on to describe Mubarak as "advocat[ing] movement on the Israeli/Palestinian track to remove a prime issue that Iran can use as a pretext."

(snip)

Jordan’s government also depicted the ongoing Israeli- Palestinian conflict as a key factor in the expansion of Iran’s regional influence, according to the Apr. 2, 2009 cable.

(snip)

During a Feb. 14, 2010 meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Qatar Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani suggested that Israel’s efforts to rally U.S. and Arab support for a more confrontational policy toward Iran was really related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "[T]he Israelis," he is reported as telling his guest, are "…using Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons as a diversion from settling matters with the Palestinians."

Three days later, according to a cable sent Feb. 22, 2010, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan warned another Congressional delegation led by Nita Lowey, a strong Israel supporter in the House of Representatives, against a military attack on Iran. ...

(snip)

"Cables Belie Gulf States’ Backing for Strikes on Iran"
by Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe, Dec. 7, 2010

The dominant theme that emerged in U.S. 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.

(snip)

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. ...

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.

(snip)

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 U.S. to attack Iran” during an April 2008 meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, the incoming chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

The implication was that al-Jubeir had made that statement during the Petraeus-Abdullah meeting. But the reporting cable makes clear that the Saudi ambassador made the remark two days later, in a conversation with the U.S. 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 Saud al-Faisal and director general of intelligence Prince Muqrin during Petraeus’s visit. “On the other hand,” it states after citing al-Jubeir’s position, the foreign minister “called instead for much more severe U.S. and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending.” Prince 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 toward 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 IPS that such a statement would “fit a pattern of communication with the United States of ingratiating themselves with their protector.” (my emphasis)

Significantly, in that respect, the Abdullah-Petraeus meeting came three months after President Bush had visited Riyadh seeking support for a more confrontational stance against Iran; five weeks after Petraeus’s predecessor at CENTCOM, Adm. William Fallon, had been fired in part for public statements that there would be no war against Iran; and less than a month after Vice President Dick Cheney had reportedly sought support for military action during his own visit to the kingdom.

Thomas Lippman, former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, who has written a book on Saudi-U.S. 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 U.S.,” 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.

(snip)

UAE Worries About a “Preemptive Strike”

(snip)

Despite bin Zayed’s bluster, the U.S. diplomat wrote in the Feb. 7, 2007, cable, the UAE “is clearly nervous about any U.S. actions that could upset their much larger and militarily superior neighbor.”

Indeed, two years later, the crown prince told visiting U.S. 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 U.S. visitors three months later. ...

(snip)

Most recently, a Feb. 22, 2010, cable has the UAE’s foreign minister, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, warning a visiting delegation headed by Rep. Nita Lowey, a strong supporter of Israel in Congress, that any “crisis or confrontation in the region [over Iran's nuclear program] would create oil supply problems worldwide.”

(snip)

“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, the only regional leader with a majority Shia population – have little or no appetite for military action against Iran.

(snip)

A Feb. 2, 2010, cable makes it clear that the sultan of Oman, who has given the U.S. 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 U.S. offers to include it in a collective missile defense system aimed at Iran in 2009.

As for Bahrain, the Gulf’s only Shia-majority sheikhdom and host of the U.S. 5th Fleet, the Times quoted a November 2009 cable in which King Hamad al-Khalifa declares that Iran’s nuclear “program must be stopped” and warns that “[t]he 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 U.S. or other countries should use to halt the program.

(Inter Press Service)