But while Israel is thrilled with what WikiLeaks revealed, Arab leaders are unsurprisingly less so – they’re not accustomed to their political maneuvering becoming public.
As a Middle East political analyst frames the situation in a column for Al Jazeera English, Arab leaders are “weak and fearful ... dependent on US protection against real and imagined fears over Iran’s potential possession of nuclear arms and its influence in the Arab world.”
In his opinion, Arab leaders' opposition to Iran is more fueled by fear that Iran could mobilize popular opposition to their governments – and the cables reveal that Arab leaders have been focusing on taking down Iran when their public wants them to be focusing on taking down Israel.
The WikiLeaks revelations will further erode the image of Arab leaders in Arab public opinion and make it more difficult for them to publicly advocate a war against Iran. Even if some of the fears expressed by Arab leaders are shared by segments of the Arab people, any official Arab attempt, beyond the closed doors of meetings with US officials, to make Iran, rather than Israel, the enemy will backfire.
Issandr El Amrani, who blogs at The Arabist, makes an argument that Cablegate is a bigger deal in the Arab world, where there is little transparency about diplomacy.
There is so much information flowing around about US policy — and often, a good deal of transparency — that a smart observer with good contacts can get a good idea of what's happening. Not so in the Arab world, and the contents of the conversations Arab leader are having with their patron state are not out in the Arab public domain or easily guessable, as anyone who reads the meaningless press statements of government press agencies will tell you. Cablegate is an important record from the Arab perspective, perhaps more than from the US one.
