WikiLeaks cables: Arab media hold back on revelations about their leaders

Many commentators, however, hint at a conspiracy as Israel escapes damaging exposure

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with Barack Obama. Riiyadh's official line is to dismiss the WikiLeaks documents. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed the WikiLeaks revelations of Arab hostility to Iran as worthless "psychological warfare". But the idea that 250,000-plus pages of classified US documents actually shed any new light on Middle Eastern realities has also been widely dismissed by many Arabs or simply ignored by their governments.

In Riyadh, where King Abdullah was shown to have repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran to "cut off the head of the snake", the only official reaction has been to say sniffily that the documents "do not concern the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nor does the kingdom have any role in producing them, nor is it aware of their authenticity".

Mainstream Arab media have covered the story of the leak. But little attention has been paid to the most sensational aspect of it for the region – that Saudis, Bahrainis, Emiratis and other leaders repeatedly urged the US to strike Iran to stop its nuclear programme. Many have wondered, however, why Israel appears to have escaped any damaging exposure – and hinted at an improbably vast conspiracy to deceive.

It is true of course that Arab governments enjoy little popular support and that Arab public opinion tends to favour a strong Iran, even a nuclear-armed Iran, as a counterweight to Israel and to US hegemony. That explains why hawkish comments about Persians or pragmatism about Israel are expressed largely in private. Public candour is rare.

So even al-Jazeera, the freest media outlet in the Arab world, has beencoy about reporting on the indiscretions of the emir of Qatar (whose family owns the Doha-based satellite channel), who is shown to speak frankly to US interlocutors about telling lies to Iran. "It is a very sensitive story," admits one employee.

Also in Qatar, the Peninsula newspaper quoted psychologist Dr Mozah al Malki as saying: "It is all deliberate. We can clearly see through the ploy. The idea of the so-called leaks is to further intensify tension between Iran and the Gulf Co-operation Council countries." According to the paper: "The so-called exposé by the much-touted whistleblowing website WikiLeaks involving Iran and three GCC states does not have many takers in Qatar."

Other Gulf papers simply ignored details about their rulers' comments to American interlocutors. Rami Khouri, a syndicated columnist, found the revelations sad, shocking and even pitiful: "The assorted Arab leaders who are quoted as asking the United States to hurry up and do something about Iran's growing nuclear technology capabilities reveal an apparent inability to take care of their own countries and citizens," he wrote in Beirut'sDaily Star.

The splenetic Asa'd Abu Khalil, who writes the Angry Arab blog, noted that many Arabs on Twitter and Facebook have been raising questions about WikiLeaks because the revelations about the Middle East were largely either known or expected. "Some are noticing that nothing damaging to Israel – even diplomatically – has been released. Some are suggesting that the US government is behind WikiLeaks. Personally, I discount those conspiracy theories although conspiracy theories can be helpful." But then he asks: "Is it possible that the intelligence officer who released them protected Israel by holding off on some documents?"

Another critical note about the revelations was sounded by the pan-Arab paper al-Quds al-Arabi, edited by the Palestinian Abdel-Bari Atwan, whosplashed the Saudi-Iran story on Monday and wrote an editorial demanding an explanation of the Saudi position.

But others suggested the impact of the WikiLeaks row would in the end be negligible: "Citizens of the Arab world, and in particular the Arabian Gulf, will not be very surprised at the content of most of these leaks,"commented Zaid Derweesh. "They know that what is said in public by their leaders differs greatly from what goes on behind closed doors. They also know that their governments will go along with whatever the US asks of them. What may come as a surprise to some will be the degree to which this subservience occurs."