The US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks represent a massive trove of documentation on US relations with key Middle Eastern regimes that would not have become available to journalists and scholars for decades but for the existence of the WikiLeaks channel. These cables cannot match the much more thorough and authoritative coverage provided by the declassified archival documents that are published by the US Department of State in its Foreign Relations of the United States volumes decades later. They are not top-secret documents and do not reveal the specifics of high-level policy decisions.
Nevertheless, the cables add an important dimension to our understanding of how the US national security state manages key interests in the Middle East. They provide glimpses of policy pursued by the State Department and by US and allied diplomats, and in particular of how other actors responded to signals from US administrations, and thus fit into the larger scheme of US policy. They also reveal contradictions between public rhetoric and the actual calculations and posture of the US and allied diplomats in pursuing US policy.
It is obviously impossible to discuss all the dimensions of US Middle East policy, much less all of the historical episodes on which cables can be found, within the scope of this chapter. The choice of issues covered here reflects the author’s view that the triangular relationship involving the United States, Israel, and Iran represents the central dynamic in US policy toward the region. The WikiLeaks cables provide many glimpses of how US diplomacy was conducted in relation to the Iran nuclear issue, which became a central US foreign policy concern in the Bush and Obama administrations. They also shed new light on how the United States accommodated the interests of Israel, and the extent to which that accommodation impinged on broader US diplomacy in the region. The cables shed important new light on how the US dealt with the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in relation to the Iran nuclear issue.
Arms sales have long played a central role in shaping US policy toward client regimes in the Middle East and South Asia, from Iran to Pakistan to Saudi Arabia. The cables help to illuminate the connection between US policy toward Iran and the interest of the Pentagon and their contractors in military sales—especially missile-defense technology sales—to its Middle East allies.
The Israel factor pervades the formulation and implementation of US Middle East policy. The domestic political power of the Israeli lobby imposes obvious constraints on the ability of any US administration to carry out a fully independent policy in the region, whether the issue is Middle East peace or Iran’s nuclear program. And US support for the continuation of Israeli military dominance in the Middle East is the primary nexus between that domestic interest group and US Israel policy. The heavy hand of domestic politics in US diplomacy is very much in evidence in the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables.
Three striking themes emerge from the diplomatic conversations revealed in the cables: first, the degree to which the US government is bound by past commitments to preserve Israel’s military dominance in the region; second, the degree to which even the Obama administration ended up tilting in an obvious way toward the Israeli position in the Palestinian peace negotiations; and third, the Obama administration’s semi-covert exploitation of the Israeli threat to attack Iran to build pressure on Iran.
The US government’s longstanding commitment to giving Israel complete military dominance—not merely over any potential rival in the region but over any conceivable combination of rivals—is one of Israel’s biggest advantages in pressuring Washington on virtually every policy issue in the region, as becomes clear from the diplomatic cable reporting the visit of the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, Andrew Shapiro, to Israel in July 2009 to discuss the maintenance of Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). In the meetings with Shapiro, Israel portrayed the situation in the region as threatening its QME, suggesting that it was the responsibility of the United States to ensure that even Arab regimes who were either strongly anti-Iran or in close cooperation with Israel in security matters could not grow any stronger militarily, because they might emerge as military adversaries of Israel in the future, and even insisted on seeing the classified intelligence on which US QME policy was based:
4. (S) GOI officials reiterated the importance of maintaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge. They said that Israel understands US policy intentions to arm moderate Arab states in the region to counter the Iranian threat, and prefers such sales originate from the United States instead of other countries like Russia or China. However, Israel continues to stress the importance of identifying potential risks that may become future threats or adversaries, and for this reason maintains several objections as indicated in the official GOI response to the QME non-paper on potential US arms sales to the region (ref e-mail to PM/RSAT separately).
5. (S) GOI officials also expressed continued interest in reviewing the QME report prior to its submission to Congress. A/S Shapiro reiterated that the report was based on an assessment from the intelligence community, and therefore not releasable to the GOI. He referenced previous points made to the Israeli embassy in Washington regarding the report, and welcomed any comments the GOI might have—although such comments should be delivered as soon as possible as the report is already overdue. Israeli interlocutors appreciated the classified nature of the report, but also made clear it was difficult to comment on the report’s results without reviewing its content or intelligence assessment. In that respect, Buchris and other GOI officials requested that the QME process be reviewed in light of future QME reports.
(S) GOI interlocutors attempted to make the argument that moderate Arab countries could in the future become adversaries—and that this should be taken into account in the QME process. During a roundtable discussion led by the MFA’s Deputy Director Policy Research gave intelligence briefs on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Lebanon to further support the argument that these countries could become future foes.
…
A/S Shapiro cited a commonality of interests with the Gulf States, which also view Iran as the preeminent threat—we should take advantage of this commonality, he said. During the J5 roundtable discussion, IDF interlocutors expressed skepticism that proposed military assistance to the Gulf would help against Iran, as some of the systems slated for delivery are not designed to counter the threats, nuclear and asymmetrical, posed by Iran. A/S Shapiro agreed that assistance to Gulf states should not diminish Israel’s QME, but argued that it sends a signal to those countries (as well as Iran) that they have strong allies in the West. It also helps convince these regimes that their best interests lie with the moderate camp rather than with Iran. [09TELAVIV1688]
These excerpts from the reporting cable of Shapiro’s discussion with Israeli national security officials underline the reality that Israel’s privileged legal and policy position ensconced in the QME assurance gives Tel Aviv leverage with which to challenge every aspect of US policy in the Middle East, and to argue against any enhanced military ties with any Arab regime—even if Israel itself was enjoying closer military and security ties with the regime, as was the case with both Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The Obama administration’s policies on Iran and on peace negotiations with the Palestinians were closely linked at the outset of his presidency. Obama intended to give priority to obtaining a freeze on Israeli settlements in order to push for agreement on a Palestinian state, and was prepared to subordinate his Iran policy to that interest. He had hoped to obtain Prime Minister Netanyahu’s acquiescence in such a freeze in return for Obama’s promise to take a tough line on Iran policy, implying that he would place more emphasis on pressure on Iran than on diplomacy with Tehran. But Netanyahu pushed back in the spring of 2009 through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), getting three-fourths of the House of Representatives to sign a letter insisting that Obama avoid overt political pressure on Israel. That move made it clear that Netanyahu was refusing such a tradeoff, and Obama soon retreated from his advocacy of a freeze, making Dennis Ross his primary adviser on the Palestinian negotiations.1
Obama’s retreat from pressing Netanyahu on the settlements issue meant that the United States was again in the position of tilting sharply, in effect, toward the Israeli side in the talks. Instead of insisting that Israel agree to the desired goal of a Palestinian state, which would have been the only role that encouraged a settlement, the Obama administration decided that it would not seek to change Netanyahu’s well-known rejection of that objective. The reporting cable on Ross’s meeting with the Chinese special Middle East envoy, Wu Sike, in October 2009 shows that Ross sought to conceal in his diplomatic contacts the administration’s abject capitulation to Netanyahu’s continued seizure of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements, undermining a central premise of the Oslo accords:
Wu then asked whether the United States had a specific peace plan for the Middle East, and if so, when it would be made public. Ambassador Ross responded that such an action could have the unintended consequence of preempting instead of supporting a negotiation process and reiterated that the United States was focused on establishing terms of reference for negotiations, and if negotiations ensue, would be an active participant, providing bridging proposals as appropriate. [09BEIJING3001]
The real reason the Obama administration was not advancing any peace plan on the Israel-Palestine conflict was Obama’s political decision to abandon any pressure on Netanyahu on the crucial issue of the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which was supposed to be part of Palestinian territory in any settlement. The formulation of the US role as “providing bridging proposals as appropriate” was a roundabout way of describing a passive US diplomatic stance on the matter and was aimed primarily at avoiding political confrontation with Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue. In fact, just as Ross was meeting with the Chinese envoy, the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government were quietly reaching agreement, announced only a few days later, on a freeze for only ten months that would exempt Jerusalem and would allow the same level of settlements as had been planned earlier. That was a position that Ross and Obama knew was unacceptable to the Palestinians, and it doomed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.2
Netanyahu’s Iran policy was based on an ostensible threat to use military force as a last resort if the issue was not resolved to Israel’s satisfaction by the United States and the permanent five members of the Security Council plus Germany (P5+1). A fully independent US Middle East policy would have rebuffed such an obviously destabilizing threat by a state that was heavily dependent on US political and economic support. But although the official stance of the Obama administration was to express its disapproval of any Israeli military action against Iran that was not undertaken in coordination with the United States, the administration’s unacknowledged policy was to exploit that Israeli threat to enhance its diplomatic leverage over Iran and to get other states to support stronger pressure on Iran. Thus US officials sought to gain the support of its European allies, as well as Turkey, Russia, and China, for more severe sanctions against Iran partly by arguing that failure to place sufficient pressure on Iran would raise the risk of an Israeli attack on Iran, and of general war and instability in the region.
The idea of exploiting an Israeli threat to attack Iran for diplomatic advantage was first suggested publicly by former White House adviser on nonproliferation Gary Samore during the 2008 presidential election campaign.3 Samore became President Obama’s adviser on weapons of mass destruction in January 2009, and found a friendly reception for the tactic he advocated. On April 1, 2009, the very day that Benjamin Netanyahu took office as prime minister of Israel, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus both suggested that Israel was likely to attack Iran if its nuclear program went too far.4
That idea was not repeated publicly after the Gates-Petraeus duo’s comments, but WikiLeaks cables show that the administration exploited the ploy of hand-wringing about a possible Israeli attack in high-level meetings with foreign officials to influence various governments’ policy on Iran. The cable on the meeting between Gates and the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, in February 2010 shows how Gates used it to prod the Italian government to be more aggressive in supporting the US line on Iran:
(S/NF) SecDef emphasized that a UNSC resolution was important because it would give the European Union and nations a legal platform on which to impose even harsher sanctions against Iran. SecDef pointedly warned that urgent action is required. Without progress in the next few months, we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, war prompted by an Israeli strike, or both. SecDef predicted “a different world” in 4–5 years if Iran developed nuclear weapons. SecDef stated that he recently delivered the same warning to PM Erdogan, and he agreed with Frattini’s assessment on Saudi Arabia and China, noting that Saudi Arabia is more important to both Beijing and Moscow than Iran. [10ROME173]
Turkey was a particular target of the administration’s argument about the danger of war with Israel, because the Erdoğan government was in close and frequent communication with Iran. The Obama administration wanted Turkish officials to discourage Iran from its defiance of the United States and the P5+1. Under Secretary of State William J. Burns brought up the Israeli attack threat in his meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Feridun H. Sinirlioğlu, when he resisted intensified sanctions:
2. (C) Burns strongly urged Sinirlioglu to support action to convince the Iranian government it is on the wrong course. Sinirliolgu reaffirmed the GoT’s opposition to a nuclear Iran; however, he registered fear about the collateral impact military action might have on Turkey and contended sanctions would unite Iranians behind the regime and harm the opposition. Burns acknowledged Turkey’s exposure to the economic effects of sanctions as a neighbor to Iran, but reminded Sinirlioglu Turkish interests would suffer if Israel were to act militarily to forestall Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons or if Egypt and Saudi Arabia were to seek nuclear arsenals of their own. [10ANKARA302]
US policy toward Iran has long been shaped by unacknowledged political, bureaucratic, and economic interests. In the early 1990s, Iran was portrayed as posing a threat of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, in order to justify US military and intelligence programs that were threatened by the loss of the Soviet threat with the end of the Cold War. In the same period, missile-defense interests used the alleged threat from future Iranian ballistic missiles to the United States as their primary political lever to force the Clinton administration to agree in principle to establish a missile defense system. For the past several years, an alleged threat from future Iranian missiles to Europe and the Middle East has been a useful device to sell missile-defense and offensive weaponry to NATO allies and Persian Gulf regimes.
The political linkage between the US missile-defense program and the alleged military threat from an imagined future Iranian intercontinental Iranian ballistic missile had been firmly established during the Clinton administration. The missile-defense lobby waxed so powerful in the second half of the 1990s that the CIA came under intense pressure to revise a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that had dismissed the danger of an Iranian ICBM threat to the United States to bring it into line with the alarmist conclusions of the “Rumsfeld Commission” that such a threat was possible within fifteen years.5 With the former Commission chairman, Donald Rumsfeld himself, as its defense secretary, the George W. Bush administration called in December 2002 for the beginning of deployment of missile defense by the end of 2004, and directed the Defense Department and the State Department to “promote international missile defense cooperation, including within bilateral and alliance structures such as NATO,” and to “negotiate appropriate arrangements for this purpose.”6
Robert M. Gates, who succeeded Rumsfeld as defense secretary in 2006, admitted, in effect, that there was no real evidence that Iran was working on an ICBM. He suggested in October 2007 that the United States would “complete the negotiations, we would develop the sites, build the sites, but perhaps would delay activating them until there was concrete proof of the threat from Iran”7 (emphasis added). Gates continued to cater to the powerful bureaucratic-industrial alliance behind the missile policy as Barack Obama’s secretary of defense. In September 2009, Obama approved a revised missile-defense program for Europe called the European Phased Adaptive Approach, which contemplated putting US missile defense technology into Europe roughly six or seven years earlier than the previous plan, now abandoned, because there was no intelligence to support the idea of a long-range Iranian missile.8
The Obama administration continued to embrace the accusation that Iran was working on a missile that would threaten European cities. In a cable conveying the “talking points” on the new European missile defense plan to be delivered to host governments around the world, the State Department portrayed Iran as an existing ballistic-missile threat to its neighbors in the Middle East, Turkey, and the Caucasus, and as “actively developing and testing ballistic missiles that can reach more of Europe” [09STATE96550].
The most important target of the administration’s message of alarm about the alleged Iranian missile threat was Russia, with which the Bush administration had raised tensions after the crisis in Georgia in 2008. The Obama administration wanted to induce Russia to be part of the international coalition pressuring Iran to give up its enrichment program, as it had been during the period from 2005 to 2007.9 Separate talking points to be used by national security adviser General James Jones in a meeting with Russian ambassador Sergei I. Kislyak included the far-reaching claim that Iranian missiles would threaten Moscow with nuclear warheads:
Iran has made more progress on short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles, and less progress on ICBMs than anticipated. Now the threat is greater to the Middle East and to Europe, with a less immediate threat to the United States.
…
There is no doubt that Iran is developing these missiles to arm them with a nuclear warhead. There is NO OTHER REASON to spend so much time and effort into [sic] developing these missiles. They are not useful weapons if only armed with a conventional warhead.
The new plan for European missile defense is better designed to protect Europe from this Iranian threat that is emerging. We intend to deploy the SM-3 interceptor which is what we are deploying in the Middle East as well. SM-3s do not have the capability to threaten Russian ICBMs.
In the first stages of deployment, we also are seeking to place these interceptors closer to Iran (from what I understand, this is exactly the idea that President Putin proposed to President Bush during their July 2007 meeting at Kennebunkport, Maine).
The new plan calls for radars and detection systems to be deployed closer to Iran. These radars will not have the capacity to track Russian ICBMs.
With this decision behind us, we now want to move aggressively to launch serious cooperation on missile defense with Russia. [09STATE96550]
The New York Times reported that a WikiLeaks cable showed US intelligence had found evidence that Iran possessed a missile that would be able to reach European capitals.10 But the diplomatic cable in question—from the secretary of state to diplomatic posts in February 2010—actually reveals that the Russian experts on Iran’s missile program participating in a “Joint Threat Assessment” of the Iranian ballistic-missile program dismissed the US argument that any Iranian missile could pose such a threat for the foreseeable future, and that US officials were unable to back up their claims [10STATE17263]. Shockingly, the Times story provided no coverage of the meeting; in fact it made no mention of the fact that the WikiLeaks cable in question was a detailed report of a joint US-Russian assessment in which the US claims about the purported Iranian missile had been shown to be highly questionable.
The US delegation claimed that Iran possessed the “BM-25” missile, which it said North Korea had developed based on a long-obsolete Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile that could reach ranges of up to 2,000 miles. When challenged by the Russians on its evidence for the claim, however, the US delegation admitted it had no photographic or other hard evidence. The US delegation asserted that the North Koreans had paraded the BM-25 through the streets of Pyongyang, but the Russians responded that they had watched videos of the parade, and that the missile on display was an entirely different missile from the BM-25.11
The State Department cable also shows that the Russians dispatched the Obama administration’s effort to introduce the specter of nuclear weapons into the issue. “It is impossible from the Russian point of view for Iran to put a nuclear device on existing missiles with an improved range and throw weight,” said a statement read on behalf of the deputy secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, adding: “Iran has no ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons at this time” [10STATE17263].
The Obama administration’s line about the Iranian missile threat to Europe and the Middle East also served the strong interest of the Pentagon and its corporate allies in selling missile-defense and offensive technology to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, and constructing a system for an integrated missile defense system in the Gulf region. In December 2008, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became the first Gulf state to order the most advanced US missile defense system, purchasing 172 PAC-3 missiles, along with the launchers, ground equipment, software, training, and support for the entire system—all of which was expected to generate about $5.1 billion in revenue for Lockheed and Raytheon.12
The UAE sale was expected to be only the beginning of a new wave of purchases of US anti-missile systems and offensive weaponry of staggering proportions. Negotiations with Saudi Arabia on an arms deal worth $60 billion had begun in 2007, mainly for new F-15 fighter planes and upgrades to the existing fleet of Saudi F-15s, and the sale was all but officially announced in October 2010. The deal was expected to be worth as much as $150 billion in total procurement and services contracts over two decades. US officials were also encouraging the Saudis to purchase the newest US missile-defense technology, known as THAAD.13
The New York Times’s lead story on the WikiLeaks cables focused heavily on the theme of the Gulf sheikdoms putting pressure on the United States to stop Iran’s nuclear program—by force, if necessary. The story referred to the alleged urging by the Saudi king to “cut off the head of the snake,” and the desire of crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nayhan of the UAE that the US take action against Iran. Netanyahu gleefully cited the cables that had been highlighted by the Times as vindicating the Israeli assessment of Iran by showing that the Saudis and other Gulf states were in agreement with it.14
The strongly anti-Iran Sunni monarchies were certainly inclined to believe the narrative pushed aggressively by the Bush administration and Israel about Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons—and they wanted the United States to take care of the problem. But the WikiLeaks cables also reveal a more complex set of interactions between those Gulf regimes and the international crisis over the Iran nuclear issue, which helps to explain the upsurge of interest in missile-defense technology. They had long tied their security to the United States by offering military bases for US forces. Now that tensions were rising between the US and Israel, on one side, and Iran on the other, they had to consider the possibility that they could be caught in the middle. That combination of circumstances made them prime customers for US missile-defense sales and services.
A diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Abu Dhabi in early February 2007 reflects the complicated linkage between the Gulf regimes’ interest in US anti-missile technology and the threat of war with Iran that was being increased by US and Israeli policies. In a meeting with US Air Force chief of staff General T. Michael Mosely, UAE crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nayhan (“MbZ”), who was also deputy commander of UAE armed forces, expressed the desire to have the Iranian nuclear program “stopped by all means available.” But the cable also revealed that the meeting had taken place in the context of ongoing discussions and negotiations over UAE interest in purchasing US missile-defense and other advanced military technologies, and that the leadership did not want to be caught in the middle between the US and Iran:
MbZ warned Moseley of the growing threat from Iran, stating that they (Iran) “can’t be allowed to have a nuclear program.” MbZ further emphasized that Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped “by all means available.” As expected, MbZ inquired about Predator B. Moseley informed MbZ that the question of Predator B would require further discussion within the interagency [sic] and with our MTCR partners, while Ambassador noted that the USG looked forward to discussion of UAE defense requirements and our shared security objectives in the context of the Gulf Security Dialogue. MbZ expressed a desire to have a missile defense system in place by Summer 2009, and was looking to add ship-based launch platforms as a part of that system. He also noted that the UAE had identified a location on the northern border at an elevation of 6,000 feet that may be suitable for installation of an early warning radar system. End Summary.
6. (S) Moseley’s meeting with MbZ immediately followed a Raytheon/Lockheed Martin briefing of MbZ on the ongoing development of THAAD/PAC-3 and shared early warning systems. Speaking of a time frame for the first time, MbZ said he wants a complete missile defense system by summer 2009. MbZ expressed particular interest in the possibility of mounting PAC-3 on Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) …
7. (S) Comment: Although MbZ is increasingly talking tough on Iran, i.e., stop Iran “by all means possible” and “deal with Iran sooner rather than later,” his comments should also be taken in the context of strong UAE interest in acquiring advanced military technology and, specifically, MbZ’s repeated requests for Predator B. The UAEG is clearly nervous about any US actions that could upset their much larger and militarily superior neighbor. The UAE’s significant trade relationship with Iran—approximately $4 billion—is another complicating factor in the relationship. On more than one occasion, the UAE leadership has expressed trepidation over the prospect of being caught in the middle between the US and Iran. End Comment. [O7ABUDHABI187]
In early April 2009, as newly elected Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to take office, senior Israeli and Obama administration defense officials began, in an apparently coordinated fashion, to put out to the news media, both publicly and privately, the line that Israel might have to use military force against Iran.15 That line served the political-diplomatic interests of both countries, and it was also a spur to the Gulf monarchies to speed up their purchases of US missile defense systems. The UAE military chief responded to those signals immediately in a meeting between the crown prince and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, in which “MbZ” explicitly expressed concern about the military option, as reported in a US diplomatic cable: “(S/NF) Turning to his concerns about an armed confrontation, MbZ said war with Iran would only harm the UAE. He is deeply concerned that the current Israeli government will initiate military action without consultation. An Israeli attack on Iran would have little impact on Iran’s capabilities, but MbZ was certain Iran would respond” [09ABUDHABI1347].
In the context of the discussion of a possible military attack on Iran that both Israeli and American officials had mounted, the Gulf monarchies accelerated their installation of US missile-defense technology. At a conference at the conservative Institute for the Study of War in Washington, DC, in January 2010 CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus declared: “Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front,” and said that the United States was installing “eight Patriot missile batteries, two in each of four countries.”16 A few days later, a US embassy cable from Kuwait reported that the Times article had heightened “Kuwaiti concerns” about an “armed confrontation” created by either the United States or Israel:
1. (C) Like some of its Arabian Gulf neighbors, the GoK was embarrassed and chagrined by discussion in a January 31 New York Times article linking plans to deploy defensive missile systems to Kuwait and a number of other Gulf countries to possible Iranian missile attacks. The article comes only days after a high-profile January 26–27 visit to Kuwait by Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani during which the Speaker pointedly and publicly warned GCC states not to allow US bases on their territories to be used for attacks on Iran. In tandem, the two events have served to heighten Kuwaiti concerns about the potential for an armed confrontation between Iran and the US (or between Iran and Israel), and increased fears that should such a contingency occur, Kuwait would be caught in the cross-fire. [10KUWAIT107]
The actual WIkiLeaks cables on the Gulf monarchies’ attitude toward the Iran nuclear issue thus show clearly that the impression given by the New York Times story on the cables that those Gulf Arab regimes were effectively aligned with Israel’s Iran policy was quite misleading. The UAE and Kuwaiti regimes, which were the leading purchasers of missile defense systems at the time, were strongly opposed to the Israeli threat of war, and were seeking missile-defense technology partly because of their fear of being caught in armed confrontation.
The core neoconservative group within the Bush administration conceived an Iran policy calling for regime change through military force, if necessary. The strategy for achieving that ultimate objective centered on making a case that Iran had conducted a covert nuclear weapons program involving a set of intelligence documents that purportedly came from within such a program. We now know that the documents were actually turned over to the German foreign intelligence agency by a member of the anti-regime Iranian exile organization Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which had carried out terrorist activities against US officials during the Shah’s regime, then against the Islamic Republic; had served the Saddam Hussein regime in its war against Iran; then began working closely with Israeli intelligence in the 1990s. The documents themselves, moreover, were marred by both technical errors and contradictions with established facts that indicated that they had been fabricated.17
The Bush administration wanted the IAEA, which had the authority to determine whether a member state was abiding by its “Safeguards” agreement with the Agency, to give the “laptop documents” legitimacy as evidence of a covert nuclear weapons program. But the IAEA’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, was skeptical about the documents’ authenticity, and believed that they should not be used as evidence against Iran under the circumstances—especially since the United States refused to allow the Agency to share them with Iran.
Even worse for the Bush administration’s efforts, ElBaradei reached an agreement with Iran on a “work plan” in August 2007 aimed at resolving several issues concerning Iranian experiments and other aspects of the history of its nuclear program that the Agency’s Department of Safeguards had found suspicious. Under the plan, Iran agreed to provide a response to the “laptop documents,” provided they were given copies of the documents to examine, but it made no commitment to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of the Agency.18 The Bush administration and its European allies, the UK, France, and Germany (“P3+1” in US diplomatic cables), were very unhappy with the agreement, fearing that ElBaradei would find Iranian explanations credible, and that Iran would be seen as cooperative with the IAEA rather than hiding its nuclear weapons intentions from it.
A series of diplomatic cables from the US mission to the UN agencies in Vienna show how the United States and its allies sought to prevent ElBaradei and the IAEA from making any move toward “normalization” of Iran’s file at the Agency unless Iran first made major concessions to Western demands to end enrichment and admitted to having had a nuclear weapons program. A cable describing a meeting a few months later recalled how the US and its three European allies had reacted to ElBaradei’s announcement of the work plan with Iran with official diplomatic notes that sought to pressure him to back away from his plan. The cable reported that the French chargé d’affaires “recalled [that] the P3+1 demarches on the DG in August warned that the work plan could not result in the ‘normalization’ of the Iran file.” He recounted that the IAEA’s director of external policy, Vilmos Cserveny—an ally of ElBaradei—had interpreted the coordinated diplomatic notes as precisely such a threat, and had warned the French diplomat: “[Y]ou cannot challenge what we say, or you will break the machine” [08UNVIENNA31]. Cserveny was saying that, if the United States and its allies attacked ElBaradei’s decisions on Iran, they would risk losing the IAEA as an effective international institution for dealing with the nuclear proliferation issue.
ElBaradei’s November 2007 report on progress with the work plan indicated that Iran had provided information that satisfied the Agency’s investigators on the issue of Iran’s account of plutonium experiments in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and its work on P2 centrifuges and the contamination of equipment with highly enriched uranium, which turned out to be from centrifuge components that had been imported from Pakistan, rather than a product of secret Iranian enrichment for nuclear weapons, as some IAEA officials had suspected.19
That result of the first of two rounds of meetings between Iran and the IAEA in the work plan presented a serious political problem for the United States and its European allies. They had hoped to convince the Russians and Chinese to join in a new resolution by the IAEA Board of Governors that would pave the way for new UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. But that would depend on whether Iran appeared to be cooperating with the IAEA or not. When they met Russian and Chinese diplomats in Vienna immediately after ElBaradei’s report was issued, a diplomatic cable reported, US and European diplomats tried to dismiss the first results of the work plan as insignificant. French ambassador Jean-François Deniau argued that ElBaradei’s work plan “had not been much of a success,” according to the cable—an assessment that contradicted the clear language of ElBaradei’s report. Deniau went on to claim that “[o]nly the plutonium issue had been closed, and despite the DG’s expectations in September, no other questions had been closed/resolved” [07UNVENNA705].
ElBaradei’s moves to clear Iran on the first three issues on the work plan agenda had been followed by another setback for US and allied plans to increase pressure on Iran: in late November the US intelligence community released to the public the conclusion of a new National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had ceased all work on nuclear weapons research in 2003.20 But the US permanent representative to the IAEA, Gregory L. Schulte, vowed in a cable to the State Department that the United States would prevent ElBaradei from proceeding any further toward normalization of the Iran file:
While the NIE has taken some wind out of our sails in Vienna, we plan to refocus the Vienna diplomatic community and the IAEA on the finding of “high confidence” that there was a nuclear weapon program in Iran up until 2003. This coincides with the inspectors’ upcoming (week of December 10) trip to Tehran to hopefully receive Iran’s answers to questions regarding “contamination,” the Gachin mine, polonium 210, and, most importantly, the alleged studies. While we have little expectation that Iran will admit the military dimension of all those items, we need to ensure that the DG does not close these issues or even declare that Iran’s information is “not inconsistent with” the Agency’s findings as he has with the plutonium and centrifuge issues. Then we would be at odds not only with Iran, but with the DG and his many supporters. [07UNVIENNA705]
The United States met with the “likeminded” states in Vienna—the Europeans, plus Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand—in early December. Diplomats of the US-led coalition expressed their common consternation with ElBaradei for having closed the files on the issues that had been resolved through Iranian explanation and documentation. The cable shows the group’s determination to force him to avoid further agreement, regardless of what information the Iranians provided to the IAEA. The “likeminded” diplomats were demanding in particular that the Agency take a hard line on the highly questionable intelligence documents that had been passed on to it by the Bush administration. The section of the cable reporting the petulant response of the coalition, which bore the revealing headline “Secretariat Not Playing Ball,” shows how the US and its allies believed ElBaradei and his staff were obliged to follow the line laid down by the dominant coalition on the Board in their handling of the Iran nuclear investigation:
The IAEA’s November correspondence with Iran on P1/2 issues and the U-metal document, the former of which the IAEA “removed from the list of outstanding issues,” caused consternation among like-minded Ambassadors. Nuclear Counselor noted that while the IAEA cast the letters as a bureaucratic step necessitated by the sequential nature of the work plan, Iran had used them to declare the issues “closed.” Smith was “singularly unimpressed” by the Secretariat’s handling of the letters, and took issue with the use of language that differed from that used by the DG in reporting to the Board. He understood that the letters were not intended to be categorical and DDG Heinonen had told him that he could revert to P1/P2 issues in dealing with the uranium contamination issue. Deniau observed that the Secretariat’s behavior demonstrated a lack of transparency and institutional difficulty; when asked for the letters, the Secretariat had claimed they were confidential and no different from the DG’s report, only to have Jalili spring them on Solana in their November 30 meeting. (Note: The EU-3 will demarche the DG separately regarding the incident with Solana, and Ambassador Schulte has already raised the issue. End note).
9. (C) For the French, P1/P2 remained an outstanding issue. French DCM Gross questioned the Secretariat’s methodology, and its apparent lowering of standards in the context of the work plan. He noted that Iran had not answered all the questions and had not provided access to a single individual outside AEOI, nor to archives or facilities despite the numerous references to military and other agency involvement in nuclear activities. Gross worried that once it confronted Iran with intelligence regarding the alleged studies, the Secretariat would accept Iran’s responses without requiring follow-up. He underlined that the Board must give an independent judgment of the work plan. Nuclear Counselor also expressed concern that the Secretariat could deal with the remaining outstanding issues in the same way as it had plutonium and P1/P2 issues, and simply declare Iran’s non-answers to be “consistent.” [O7UNVIENNA742]
When the same group of diplomats reconvened in mid January 2008, they were even more disturbed by evidence that ElBaradei intended to resolve the remaining issues, possibly even including the supposedly incriminating documents depicting a covert Iranian nuclear weapons project. Japan’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, commented tartly that ElBaradei might conclude that Iran “confessed to being not guilty” at the conclusion of the work plan, and US ambassador Schulte insisted that “Iran must admit and explain the genesis and purpose of the studies; thus any pronouncement of ‘not guilty’ cannot be adequate” [08UNVIENNA31].
By February, the United States was ready to warn ElBaradei that failing to keep Iran under suspicion in regard to the intelligence documents would risk the loss of contributions to the IAEA from the United States and its allies, and wanted the message conveyed by the P3+1 in a demarche. As the reporting cable from Ambassador Schulte put it,
In the coming weeks we must continue to set a high bar for the work plan and make clear in our public and private comments that the work plan is meaningless unless Iran admits weaponization activities and allows the IAEA to verify they have stopped. We must also warn the DG in very stark terms that the IAEA’s integrity and his own credibility are at stake and that any hint of whitewash of Iran’s weapons activities would cause irreparable harm to the Agency’s relationship with major donors.
(S) We recommend conveying these messages through a [P3+1] demarche in Vienna, an appropriately-timed phone call from the Secretary, ElBaradei’s contacts in Paris and Munich in mid-February, and a possible stop by U/S Burns in Vienna next week. A [P3+1] demarche should take place prior to the issuance of the report, expected sometime between February 20–25. The French are not sure of joining such a demarche just after the DG’s February 14 trip to Paris where he would have already heard a similar message from the GOF, but we have asked them to reconsider. A demarche prior to the DG report would also allow us to better assess where the DG stands on the work plan, and how to frame a Board resolution.
(S) The [P3+1] will also work quietly on preparing a resolution, which could be tabled upon the issuance of the report. As to the content of that resolution, P3+1 Ambassadors considered options for a more critical vice consensual assessment of the Secretariat’s efforts. If, as expected, the DG is not prepared to say Iran’s cooperation on the work plan has been unsatisfactory, the UK is of the view that the Board will have to do so for him. A resolution would underline the Board/UNSC’s basic requirements including suspension. The UK argued for a more critical resolution to “put an end to the work plan episode.” Smith warned that in the face of an uncritical DG report, we will need to challenge the work plan, even if [it] means a vote. He said his vote counting gave us a bare majority in the Board even if the Russians and Chinese vote against. [08UNVIENNA64]
It was the second time in less than a year that the Bush administration had threatened that US and allied funding for the Agency would be cut if ElBaradei persisted in a course of action on Iran that was opposed to US policy. In mid 2007, Ambassador Schulte had passed on to ElBaradei a comment by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “the Americans could treat the IAEA budget like that of the Universal Postal Union.”21
In March 2008, however, the tone of US reporting on the IAEA and Iran shifted markedly to emphasize the need to support the IAEA push on the “weaponization studies,” in particular. The reason for the new comfort level was that the head of the IAEA Department of Safeguards, Olli Heinonen, had emerged clearly as a firm ally of the US-led coalition on the IAEA’s handling of the intelligence documents. Ambassador Schulte reported in late March on how that development played into US strategy:
We share UK Ambassador Smith’s concern that little public and private discussion of Iran in Vienna will mean no progress on the Iran file by the June Board. That would both feed the perception that we are at a stalemate and fuel pressure by ElBaradei and others that the [P5+1]—and specifically the US—need to make a concession to revive negotiations. The IAEA Secretariat, meanwhile, appears divided between those, like Heinonen, who want to press ahead on the weaponization investigation, and others who want to use passage of 1803 as an excuse to slow-roll the Iran account for the rest of 2008. The perception of a stalemate would feed into Iran’s strategy to delay and divide the international community and make it more difficult to get support if we decided to pursue a June Board resolution that reaffirmed the role of the Board. In the wake of the Majles elections and Iran’s declarations that the work plan is closed, this drift could also give additional fuel to Iranian hard-line arguments that non-cooperation and aggressive diplomacy will be successful on the nuclear issue and thus make Tehran’s cooperation even less likely. [08UNVIENNA185]
Reflecting the commitment of Heinonen to the US line implied in the reporting cable, the IAEA reports of May and September 2008 presented the intelligence documents for the first time as “credible,” and even employed deceptive language to insinuate falsely that Iran had acknowledged some of the activities portrayed in the documents, while suggesting that they were for non-nuclear purposes. In fact, however, Iran had never acknowledged that anything in the laptop documents was real except for the names of certain publicly known individuals, organizations, and addresses, as the IAEA itself admitted in a report three years later.22
It was the start of a political campaign to indict Iran for refusing to cooperate with what was described as an IAEA investigation of the “possible military dimensions” of the Iranian nuclear program. What Iran had refused to do, however, was provide classified conventional military data that the IAEA was demanding as proof that Iran had not done what was portrayed in the documents.23 But the IAEA’s suggestion that Iran had admitted partial guilt and was refusing to cooperate with the investigation helped to propel the international crisis over the Iran nuclear issue for the next several years.
The diplomatic cables in the WikiLeaks files show the ebb and flow of State Department and embassy business, rather than the more exciting top-secret meetings of the administration’s national security team. But among the tens of thousands in the collection are many cables that show how the official and media version of US policy in the Middle East concealed US motives and strategies, as well as objective political-diplomatic realities contradicting the approved narrative.
The WikiLeaks cables excerpted and quoted above show how the Bush and Obama administrations subordinated US diplomatic freedom and impartiality on the crucial issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations to its political imperative of support for Israeli interests. Secondly, they demonstrate that both administrations privately sought to exploit the threat of Israeli attack on Iran for diplomatic purposes. They pushed a public and private diplomatic line about a threat from Iranian ballistic missiles that was not based on objective fact, but reflected the bureaucratic and private economic interests of the Pentagon and its industrial allies. Finally, they used the threat to withdraw support from the IAEA to pressure the head of the Agency to come to conclusions about the Iranian nuclear program that were not consistent with the facts, but would be useful to US efforts to shut down Iran’s nuclear program or punish it for refusing to do so.
The WikiLeaks collection of cables is an essential tool for unearthing the truth about US foreign policy. Unfortunately, the news media treatment of the cables, which focused overwhelmingly on Iran-related cables, obscured some of their important revelations and portrayed the cables as supporting the official line of the United States, Israel, and their European allies. The central lesson of the release of the cables is therefore that digging up the truth from leaked material is a job that can only be done by independent journalists and researchers—not by those whose search for truth is circumscribed by structures of interest and power.