U.S. behind disclosures, says Ahmadinejad

DUBAI: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the U.S. of masterminding the release of thousands of cables by the WikiLeaks website as part of a “psychological warfare” campaign. At a press conference in Tehran on Monday, Mr. Ahamdinejad said the Americans had released the documents intentionally as part of a well organised plan. Asked to elaborate, he said: “Let me first correct you. The material was not leaked, but rather released in an organised way,” Iran's state-run Press TV reported.

A cable of April 20, 2008 released by WikiLeaks cites Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz comparing Iran to the “head of a snake” which needed to be “cut off.” However, in his riposte, the Iranian President stressed that the documents would not affect Tehran's external relations. “The U.S. administration released them and based on them they pass judgment …. [The documents] have no legal value and will not have the political effect they seek,” Press TV quoted him as saying. Mr. Ahmadinejad compared the WikiLeaks disclosure to a “game,” which, in his view is “not worth commenting upon and that no one would waste their time reviewing them”.

In response to King Abdullah's reported comments, a senior diplomatic source in the region told The Hindu, on conditions of anonymity, that Saudi Arabia's position on the developments in the region including Iran has been evolving, especially since the Gaza war which ended in January 2009. He added that Saudi Arabia had “since been working together with countries in the region including Iran to defuse tensions in West Asia's various trouble spots”. “To my mind the cable of April 20, 2008 is outdated and has been overtaken by events,” he observed.

AFP reports from Tehran: The cables also show that Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as early as 2005 expressed support for military action against Iran. “I believe this guy is going to take us into war,” he said in 2006. “Al-Qaeda is not going to get a nuclear bomb; Iran is a matter of time,” he said in 2009. King Hamad of Bahrain told U.S. General David Petraeus in November 2009: “That [nuclear] programme must be stopped .... The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”