MIDDLE EAST: Arab media play down WikiLeaks reports of support for Iran war

Well, this is awkward.

Many of the same Arab governments that called for an investigation into U.S. war crimes based on the WikiLeaks Iraq war log continue to ignore revelations in the latest trove of leaked documents that show Arab leaders pushed the United States to use military force against Iran.

Headlines in the heavily state-controlled Saudi media were dominated by news of King Abdullah's ongoing physiotherapy, while the top story in the Emirati newspaper, Al Bayan, centered on Prince Mohamad bin Rashid's praise for the country's progress toward "transparency." Most mentions of the WikiLeaks documents in official Arabic news outlets were scrubbed of any reference to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing instead on U.S. attempts to control the damage to its diplomatic relations.

Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, considered one of the most credible pan-Arab news outlets, tread lightly in its coverage and generally refrained from repeating the most incendiary quotes from the heads of neighboring states.

According to the newly leaked documents, leaders of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were among those privately urging the United States to strike Iranian nuclear facilities while publicly claiming to pursue a neutral foreign policy, exposing dangerous rifts between not only Arab states and Iran, but also between the Arab leadership and the people of those countries.

"I believe [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] is going to take us to war," Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan reportedly told one diplomat.

According to one cable, Saudi King Abdullah urges the United States to "cut off the head of the snake" before it is too late. In another, he suggests Guantanamo detainees be fitted with electronic tracking chips similar to the ones used for falcons and horses.

The revelations are at the very least embarrassing and potentially destabilizing in a region where American military intervention is deeply resented and collaboration with Israeli security interests is considered tantamount to betrayal.

As of Monday, the only official Arab response appeared to be from the Emirati charge d'affairs in Tehran, who refused to confirm or deny whether his country had asked the United States to attack Iran, but did say that "at the moment, Iran and the UAE are having good relations."

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Screen grab: The Saudi English-language newspaper Arab News did not report comments allegedly made by Saudi officials and even King Abdullah regarding a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Credit: arabnews.com

Comments

[Zinat Rehana]

Terrorism is the pivotal thing around which the world basically moves now.It seems A Greek meeting a Greek.When the United States keeps utterly silent against surreptitious act encompassing between Saudi royal family as well as the King with the terrorist gangs around the world which refers it is itself an entrepreneur as a war mongering country against the world peace or in favor of terrorism. It may be regarded as an alternate pioneer of Saudi government’s corruption.The Saudi King’s ill intention was to merge with the world of imperialism. According to the Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz the two regions should be demolished and that two are Israel and Iran.

The British Pakistani author and historian Tariq Ali truly upholded the cause of Saudi extremism that is Wahhabism and Wahhabism a very funny doctrine which is left away from life and supports the killing of Shiite muslims as the visa of getting into the world of heaven.The merit of the fact is the Shiite muslims are treating by the corrupt governance of Saudi King with an awful manner in an inhumanistic approach.Being a 15% minority of the whole population of Saudi Arabia ,they are utterly deprived of their fundamental rights of a rational being as well as the rights of their performing the ritual tasks have been curtailed altogether. Moreover, there are only 2 Shiites among the 120 members of the Saudi parliament . Its really ridiculous as well as ironical.

Like a day light its quite evident that King Abdullah belong to a pro-terrorism class and his utilitarian activities are based on violation of human rights.He is of the opinion that Iran and Israel are the same. Where Israel is keeping itself occupied in all the notorious and massacring activities for the long 5 decades, Iran is the most glorious nation, the denizens of it can raise their heads with proud.Iran has the potentiality,the intellectuality as well as the serenity there exists there very well .

Its certainly assumed that King Abdullah ,the tyrannical ruler, the war monger is becoming an upcoming stage butt of the United States in the Persian Gulf region. So … Is this very Saudi King eligible to hold the title of the Custodian of two Holy mosques, which he has assigned to himself ? Is this very king ,the new stooge has right to reign over anymore ?

[John]

It's a leak sold for 30 silver coins. This could set back years of foreign relations with the Middle East and probably dismantle any negotiations amongst the Arab nations. Players were in play, even if the game is manipulation to position our country and allies for the future. And now speculation will create or confirm what they initially doubted, even if treaties were for the good of their man and country.

[Joe]

Is it a leak or a plant!
Considering huge amount of documents spanning different departments of US government, one should take these documents with a grain of salt, after all majority of VIPs believed the documents of Iraq having WMD prior to the war and therefore it's wise to wait and see if these documents will generate in to changing policies and actions by warmonger nations which means it's intentional plant by intelligence agencies either to lay a ground for a next war or stopping it, public opinion is main target of these "leaked" documents!

[Dean Blake]

@ billy Chowdhury - the relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Yeminite Bin Ladin family is not clandistine, but well known since the scion of the Bin Ladin famly was first hired to build roads to help unify Saudi Arabia that others said could not be built and has been awareded with contracts ever since.

How did you arive at the conclusion "Israel, a country that has been busy murdering, attacking and massacring for 60 years, and Iran that has been the most pacifist country in the regionIt is a conclusion that doesn't follow from your lengthy article at all.
Iran has been murdering its own citizens under the former Shah and now under the Grand Ayatollahs.
Israel has suffered at the hands of Iran as its Farsi speaking Jewish citizens were expelled from Iran being forced to leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs after 2,400 years, and they have been defending themselves from Shites like the Iranians and their proxies ever since.

[Novus Ordo Seclorum]

I am still lost here since yesterday. Should this be called state terrorism, international terrorism, international diplomacy or global mafia?
When his majesty the King hired Bush to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, I thought that his thirst for blood had been quenched... I was wrong, the guy is still blood thirsty! After going throught most of the wiki releases I now understand that he really enjoys Shiites' blood. Long live the Peninsula of the Sauds! Long live the king? or as the Brits say, God bless the king!

[billy Chowdhury]

The corrupt king of Saudi Arabia Malek Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz whose clandestine connections with the families of Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush have made him a notorious and unpopular figure in the Islamic world has recently made unbelievably controversial remarks which leaved no doubt that this tyrannical monarch is moving towards ushering himself as the new stooge of the United States in the Persian Gulf region.
The Saudi King who has seemingly started attempts to merge his country with the imperialist world told the French Defense Minister Hervé Morin in a meeting held after the Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre that "two states in region do not deserve to exist: Israel and Iran."
Juxtaposed with the impolite and uncompromising mistreatment of the Iranian pilgrims by the Saudi police forces in Mecca and Medina, the bizarre and unprecedented remarks of the Saudi tyrant whose monarchy has been described as "head-chopping, hand-severing, anti-feminist, misogynist, feudal [and] anti-democratic" by Robert Fisk highlighted the Arab kingdom's decisiveness to distance itself from the union of Islamic nations and join the bloc of imperialist governments.
So, let's pose some vital questions. Does the Saudi king really deserve the title of the Custodian of Two Holy Mosques, which he has assigned to himself? Does this corrupt monarch really care about the Islamic solidarity?
In an article titled "The Kingdom of Corruption, the Saudi Connection", the British Pakistani author and historian Tariq Ali wrote about the undiscovered and unseen realities of Saudi Arabia intelligently: "In normal times the Saudi Kingdom is barely covered by the Western media. The Ambassadors report to their respective chanceries that all is well and the continuity of the regime is not threatened. It requires the imprisonment of an American or British citizen or for a British nurse to be chucked out of a window for attention to focus on the regime in Riyadh."
"Even less is known about the state religion, which is not an everyday version of Sunni or Shia Islam, but a peculiarly virulent, ultra-puritanical strain known as Wahhabism. This is the religion of the Saudi royals, the state bureaucracy, the army and air-force and, of course, Osama Bin Laden, the best-known Saudi citizen in the world, currently resident in Afghanistan" he adds.
Tariq Ali accurately pinpointed the root of Saudi extremism: Wahhabism, an artificially manufactured denomination of Islam which authorizes the killing of Shiite Muslims as a means of entering the heaven. The very fact that Shiite Muslims are subject to the most vicious and cruel mistreatments of fanatic Wahabis in Saudi Arabia is almost known to everyone.
Although the Shiites constitute a 15% minority of the Saudi Arabia's 20-million population, they're simply deprived of the most basic rudiments of a normal life and an equal right to practice their particular rites and rituals. The social situation is also the same for Shiite Saudis. According to Amir Taheri's National Review article, of the top 400 government officials in Saudi Arabia, only 1 person is Shiite. More regrettably, of the 120 members of the all-appointed Saudi parliament only two are Shiites.
While the international human rights organizations are accustomed to turning a blind eye to the inhuman discriminations imposed on the Saudi Shiites by the radical Wahabis, the pains and grieves of this subjugated minority are building up progressively.
In March 2009, a group of Shiite leaders threatened the Saudi government that they might pull out of the kingdom should the discriminatory measures against the Shiite minority remain in effect. Sheikh Nimr Baqer Al-Nimr had lashed out at the Saudi regime, calling on Shiites to "be ready to defend themselves" and brandishing the threat of secession from the oil-rich province of Qatif. The Saudi Interior Minister denied the Shiite leaders' statements while he was in New York.
Of the sporadic protests to the unjustifiable mistreatment of Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the most prominent one was the Human Rights Watch's warning to the Riyadh government to refrain from the further suppression of Shiites. In September 2009, the Human Rights Watch released a 32-page report in which the Saudi government was accused of "systemic state discrimination" against the Shiites in the areas of religion, education, justice and employment.
According to the report, "the Saudi government has long regarded its Shiite citizens through the prism of Wahhabi dogma or state stability, and brands them as unbelievers or suspects even their national loyalties"
"In employment, there are no Shi'a government ministers, senior diplomats or high-ranking military officers. And Shi'a students generally can't even get admission to military academies," the report says.
The corruption of Saudi government, however, is not limited to the extrajudicial and atrocious suppression of its Shiite citizens.
The longstanding, robust and unconcealed connections of the Saudi royal family with the terrorist gangs around the world, which was never challenged nor protested by the United States that considers itself a harbinger of war on terrorism, should be deemed another manifestation of Saudi's governmental corruption. With its close ties to the Bin Laden family, doesn't Saudi Arabia deserve to be listed in the U.S.-fabricated list of State Sponsors of Terrorism?
According to Michael Parenti, "throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin Laden’s father."
In "Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden", two French intelligence analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Clinton and Bush administrations impeded investigations of bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and to maintain the stability of the oil market.
Prior to 1980, George Bush Jr. is a failed oil man. Three times friends and investors have bailed him out to keep him from going bankrupt. But in this year, the same year his father becomes President, some Saudis buy a portion of his small company, Harken, which has never worked outside of Texas. Later in the year, Harken wins a contract in the Persian Gulf and starts doing well financially. These transactions seem so suspicious that the Wall Street Journal in 1991 states it "raises the question of ... an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Two major investors in Bush's company during this time are Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's oldest brother, and Khaled bin Mahfouz.
According to Paul Thompson's article in Amazon News, Mohammed al-Khilewi, the First Secretary at the Saudi Mission to the United Nations, defects and seeks political asylum in the US. He brings with him 14,000 internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal family's corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for terrorists. He meets with two FBI agents and an Assistant US Attorney. "We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on the table," says his lawyer, "but the agents refused to accept them."
Anyway, Saudi Arabia's state corruption, its undeniable relations with the terrorist gangs and the family of Osama Bin Laden, its violation of human rights and its non-commitment to the principles of humanity is not hidden from the public opinions worldwide. King Abdullah had better do something about the black records of his support for the global terrorism and violation of human rights rather than issuing statements about the existence of countries on the world map. By putting Iran and Israel at the same level, King Abdullah revealed his impure nature to the world. Israel, a country that has been busy murdering, attacking and massacring for 60 years, and Iran that has been the most pacifist country in the region; are these two the same?