As more and more diplomatic cables become available, and as real analysts review them, it will become increasingly [...]]]> Foreign Policy‘s Marc Lynch has been all over the hawks’ cries for war with Iran, which they’ve based on a couple leaked cables of dictatorial Arabs wanting military action (or talking tough about it, at least).

As more and more diplomatic cables become available, and as real analysts review them, it will become increasingly apparent that many of the early reports on the perspectives of a handful of hawkish Arab leaders are without critical context.

Lynch:

Iran hawks have been gloating that the quotes from a few Arab leaders in the initial cable release vindicate their analysis and discredit skeptics of military action against Iran. It doesn’t. [U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] Gates’ comment about the Saudis needing to “get into the game” came almost two years after [Saudi] King Abdullah’s now-famous “cut off the head of the snake” comment. And another cable from January 2008 shows Abdullah telling [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy that Saudi Arabia “does not want to inflame the situation,” recommends “continued international engagement” with Iran and “is not yet ready to take any action besides diplomacy.” Maybe, just maybe, those private remarks weren’t actually a very reliable guide to what the Saudis will really do in public?

The way the Iran hawks have been leaping at a few juicy quotes while ignoring the entire well-known context only shows the ongoing poverty of their analysis. I would expect better from the serious analysts on the hawkish side, but, well, there you are.

In this post, Lynch expands upon points he made the day before on the media’s emphasis of the hawkish views of regional leaders:

The point here is not to say that the cautious views matter and the hawkish ones don’t. Nor does it say that Arab leaders haven’t been calling for tough measures against Iran, since they have been doing just that for years. It’s to say that Arab leaders are divided and uncertain about how to deal with Iran, and fearful of taking a strong position in public. In other words, it would be a mistake to “make too much of the private remarks of selected Arab regime figures, without considering whether those remarks reflect an internal consensus within their regimes or whether they will be repeated in public in a moment of political crisis.” That’s pretty much still where we are today.

Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: [...]]]> Matt Duss at Think Progress picks up on Carnegie Endowment expert Karim Sadjadpour‘s Financial Times piece yesterday to point out that military containment won’t work against as a strategy against a country — Iran — that garners regional clout through political maneuvering.

Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: Just as neoconservative Iran hawks can’t have it both ways — boosting the Green movement and calling for bombing Iran — those Arab leaders who call for a U.S. attack on Iran probably don’t care a whit about democracy in Iran either. (And why should they? Their countries aren’t exactly democracies nor do they care what their own citizens/subjects think).

In fact, a democratic Iran would probably be bad news for these Gulf dictatorships.

Sadjadpour (emphasis by Duss):

The WikiLeaks revelations make clear that Arab officials believe Iran to be inherently dishonest and dangerous. The feeling is probably mutual. But they hide perhaps a more interesting issue, namely what type of Iranian government would actually best serve Gulf Arab interests.

President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the Islamic Republic may be loathed, but equally the advent of a more progressive, democratic Iran would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realise its enormous potential. In the zero-sum game of Middle Eastern politics, a democratic Iran would pose huge challenges to Persian Gulf sheikhdoms.

The irony that someone like Benjamin Wienthal, who’s at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, doesn’t recognize this in his National Review post says something about how the hawkish agenda drives neoconservatives — and not utopian notions of freedom and democracy.

Weinthal writes:

While Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman have long privately conveyed such warnings to diplomats, they never had the courage to flex their muscles in public.

Right! And that’s because these are dictatorships, and these Arab leaders are wildly out of step with their publics.

Neoconservatives, being neoconservatives, will gather allies in their campaign for war with Iran wherever they can find them.

Freeman, who has extensive [...]]]> Earlier this week, Ambassador Chas W. Freeman offered some invaluable insights on WikiLeaks, which Jim Lobe and I wrote about in this IPS piece and I shared here.  I thought I’d take another chance to empty my notebook of more of Freeman’s observations. (And check out his new book.)

Freeman, who has extensive diplomatic experience in the Gulf region, including an appointment as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was nonplused by the contentious rhetoric of Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. In one of the cables released by WikiLeaks, Zayed called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Hitler.” In the words of the U.S. note-taker, Zayed warned against appeasement with Iran.

Freeman’s reaction:

To my experience, if you say Ahamdinejad is “Hitler,” that means you think the person you’re talking with will like you to say that. So it’s ingratiating language.

Many neocons have made hay over the war cries of some regional Arab leaders, claiming these fears give more credence to Israeli warnings about Iran, now that they have been joined by their usually-diametrically-opposed neighbors. Freeman offered a different take, making a sharp observation about the import of Arab influence in Washington:

Does the fact that even an important Arab country, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, urges decisive action have a great deal of influence in Washington’s thinking? Probably not. There’s nothing else that they feel strongly about that weighs heavily on Washington’s views.

But that doesn’t mean the WikiLeaks release will be not have impact on the United States and it’s diplomatic agenda:

It will be a long time before anyone in the region will speak candidly to an American official. If you cannot speak in confidence with someone, you will not speak to them.

The released cables could serve Iran’s agenda in a some roundabout way:

Ahmadinejad will, as he did, dismiss these leaks. But Iran will take this as exposure of the hypocrisy of their neighbors’ leader. But there may also be a reaction form ordinary citizens/subjects in various places.

I don’t think this does any damage to Iran. In fact, it probably increases the prestige of Iran because it inflates the menace that Iran poses.

And bolster the agenda of those who seek war with Iran:

It’ll certainly be a boost for the Israeli effort to corral the U.S. into some sort of action against Iran.

On that note, it’s worth mentioning Freeman’s skepticism about what the cables actually reveal. Tony Karon at Time addressed this in his excellent piece called “Deception Par for the Course in Mideast Diplomacy,” Karon points to a WikiLeaked cable, where an American diplomat also expressed skepticism about Israeli rhetoric as well as the Israeli timeframe for the Iranian nuclear program:

COMMENT: It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States

Freeman concurs that duplicity runs rampant among Mideast diplomats, “worse than any place” he’s been:

The Middle East is a place that gave diplomacy a bad name in the beginning. There’s the Arab proverb “kiss the hand you cannot bite.” You’ve gotta take everything with a grain of salt in the Middle East, including the Israelis. Especially the Israelis.

The notion that Iran occupies the sole spot of concern for autocratic Arab regimes was a quickly rising meme among hawkish commentators.

Jim Lobe and I have a piece on the IPS wire that looks closely at reactions to the belligerent talk of some Arab leaders about Iran found in WikiLeaks’ CableGate stash.

The notion that Iran occupies the sole spot of concern for autocratic Arab regimes was a quickly rising meme among hawkish commentators.

Here’s what we wrote on their reactions and why, perhaps, they shouldn’t be so quick to think that Arab leaders are not also focused on Israel:

Neo-conservatives and other war hawks, including those in power in Israel, have responded to those comments with barely concealed glee.

“[T]he most interesting thing to come from the latest WikiLeaks round is Arab world leaders’ being forced to come out of the diplomatic closet and declare Iran’s regime the number one enemy in the Middle East,” wrote Benjamin Weinthal, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, on the website of the National Review.

“In the Israeli media, defense analysts are concluding that the leaked comments vindicate Israel’s longstanding position on the need for swift and powerful action against Iran’s out-of-control regime,” Weinthal continued.

“The corollary to this is that Arab leaders very generally will not speak to Americans – though they will speak to others – about their fear of Israel,” Chas Freeman, a former diplomat who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told IPS. “So the fact that Israel doesn’t feature in these conversations says nothing other than the Arabs are tactfully obsequious.”

(I’ve added the links and italics, which the wire does not accomodate.)

Here’s what he had [...]]]> For a piece on the IPS wire, Jim Lobe and I interviewed Chas Freeman, a career foreign service officer who served as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and just released a new book, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East,  on the recent history of the U.S. in the Middle East.

Here’s what he had to say about the hawkish comments of some autocratic Arab leaders found in the WikiLeaks cable dump:

“It’s never been a secret that the Gulf Arabs are deeply concerned by Iran’s growth in power and influence in the region, much of which was made possible by various U.S. policies (in Iraq, Syria, the occupied territories, and Lebanon),” he told IPS.

“But I think it’s easy to misread these expressions. If you say ‘cut off the head of the snake,’ or if you say ‘not dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue is more dangerous than dealing with it,’ what you’re saying, in my experience with rulers in the Gulf, is that you look to the U.S. to solve problems that you have no idea how to deal with but which bother you,” Freeman said.

“Does that mean that you’re endorsing military strikes? Despite the vivid language, I’d say it doesn’t. What is says is there’s a problem and we look to you (as a superpower) to handle it,” he said.

At ThinkProgress, Matt Duss, as usual, had some interesting thoughts on the revelations about the ‘snake head’ talk. He concluded with this [...]]]> Perhaps the most shocking revelation in U.S.-Iran news from the WikiLeaks cable dump was not the hostility of some autocratic Arab gulf leaders to Iran, but the level of their rhetoric.

At ThinkProgress, Matt Duss, as usual, had some interesting thoughts on the revelations about the ‘snake head’ talk. He concluded with this sobering thought:

While it’s obviously important to take the concerns of our allies and partners seriously, U.S. officials, analysts, and military leaders have repeatedly made clear that a strike on Iran would be, at best, a short-term solution that would actually make an Iranian nuclear weapon more likely, not less, while carrying a host of other highly negative consequences for U.S. goals and interests. That’s, of course, the key question U.S. foreign policy should be concerned with.