A Tangle in the Loom: WikiLeaks and Iran

The recent thread of WikiLeaks sheds light on a foreign policy problem of nuclear proportions.

In the past week, thousands of important documents and information have been leaked from various U.S. government agencies on WikiLeaks. The leaks are controversial, not only for their sheer number, but for release of cables and conversations between U.S. and very high-ranking officials from other countries. The leaks even prompted Barack Obama to enact new sanctions on Iran today. These sanctions blacklist 10 Iranian businesses connected to the Islamic Republic’s national bank and shipping lines, as well as five executives of these businesses.

On Monday, November 29, 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the leaked documents as “American psychological warfare that would not affect his country’s relations with other nations.” While Ahmadinejad and his administration might be crediting the U.S. bureaucracy with a bit too undeserved organizational skills by calling the leaks “organized to be released on a regular basis,” the leaked documents definitely confirm prevalent theories about the relations between Iran and its Arab gulf state neighbors and its aspirations for regional hegemony.

It is well-known that Saudi Arabia and Iran are vying for regional hegemony, with Iran’s relative conventional military power and sphere of influence giving it a strong edge over the Saudi kingdom. Not only does this allow Iran to influence the trajectories of Iraq and Afghanistan, thus extending its regional influence, its status as a regional hegemon tips the regional balance of power away from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states that have alliances with the United States. Feeling threatened by such expanding Iranian influence even in the face of decades of sanctions, it is hardly surprising that the Saudi regime harbors strong animosity for the Khamenei’s. However, it was previously unknown that the Saudi-Iranian enmity went so far that Saudi Arabian King Abdullah repeatedly begged the United States to “‘cut off the head of the snake’ by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” one of the final pieces of Iranian policy that would enable it to secure the role of an undisputed regional hegemonic power. In order to curb Iranian influence, the United States announced in October of 2010 that it will sell $60 billion worth of military aircraft to the Saudi regime.

Saudi Arabia is not the only gulf state feeling pressure to eliminate Iranian challenges to the current balance of power. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain argued in favor of forceful action by any means necessary to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. Bahrain, a tiny kingdom on the Persian Gulf that is home to the American Fifth Fleet’s naval base, has been feeling Iranian pressure and influence for years. In July of 2007, Iranian advisor to Khamenei Hossein Shariatmadari stated that “The public demand in Bahrain is the reunification of this province with its motherland, the Islamic Iran.” An unnamed senior Omani military official (Oman being the country that helped secure the release of American Sarah Shourd from Evin Prison), is cited in a correspondence as unable to decide which would be worse – “a strike against Iran’s nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.” In a December 2005 meeting with American military commanders, United Arab Emirates defense chief and crown prince Mohammad bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi lobbied for American military action against Iran either “this year or the next.” Bin Zayed also expressed fears of a nuclear Iranian state, declaring that “any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to achieve even greater goals.”

While Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, on MSNBC Live is not the best interviewer, the answers provided by Doctors Juan Cole and Trita Parsi in this brief interview are very informative and discuss the fears of changing regional balances of power.

Meanwhile, tensions in the region build as Israeli public opinion and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu perceive a growing, intolerable Iranian nuclear threat. Ehud Barak and prominent members of the Israeli intelligence community argue that Iran is not an existential threat nor is Israel the primary target of Iranian ambitions. Even Syrian president Bashar al-Assad argues that Iran will not use a nuclear weapon against Israel, stating that “an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel would result in massive Palestinian casualties, which Iran would never risk.” However, Iranian weapons purchases from North Korea does little to convince the public and Israeli politicians writ large of this understanding. Netanyahu views the WikiLeaks as something positive for Israel, confirming his suspicions about Iranian nuclear ambitions and showing the extent to which Israel and Arab states share a strong mutual interest in preventing Iranian hegemonic aspirations.

Tensions continue to escalate between these states and power blocs in the Middle East. Yesterday, two prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, both professors at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, were attacked in different parts of Tehran. Assailents on motorcycles managed to attach and detonate magnetized car bombs to the cars of scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi, the former killed and the latter injured with his wife. Shahriari was involved in a major project with Iran’s nuclear agency, and Abbasi is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and listed as one of several involved in secret nuclear activity in a 2007 U.N. resolution. Abbasi was formerly an expert for Iran’s Defense Ministry and a top specialist in nuclear isotope separation. The Iranian regime currently blames Israel and the United States for orchestrating these attacks. Intelligence analysts blame Mossad for the 2007 death of top Esfahan uranium plant scientist Ardeshire Hassanpour. In January of 2010, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was also killed, but it is unclear whether his death was related to his support of Mir Hossien Mousavi or an Israeli/American operation; he also died in a car bombing similar to that of Shahriari.

The WikiLeaks available thus far clearly confirm the fears of Arab gulf states and seem to perpetuate Israeli public opinion and Netanyahu’s threat perceptions of Iran. In moving forward from the latest sanctions on Iran, the United States must decide how to manage these states’ interests to balance with its own in the Middle East and avoid yet another military conflict that would have, in Barak’s words, “unacceptable collateral damage,” on all sides.