Classified U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks suggest that Iran goes into next week's nuclear talks with few remaining allies, increasingly isolated not only from the United States and Europe but also from most of its Muslim neighbors in the Middle East.
The talks, which are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Geneva, would be the first since negotiations fell apart in August over a U.N. proposal to ship Iran's low-enriched uranium abroad for conversion to fuel that could be used in Tehran's medical programs.
The cables released by WikiLeaks indicate that Middle East leaders and diplomats have told U.S. officials that Iran has little support in the region, conceivably strengthening the hands of U.S. and European negotiators at next week's discussions.
That is by no means a given: The cables released by WikiLeaks and those cited by its partner news organizations — the authenticity of which the United States refuses to confirm — are only a small fraction of those the site obtained and may not reflect the complete picture available in the full collection. And while many of them are classified, none are labeled "top secret," meaning they likely don't include the most sensitive information that informs U.S. foreign policy.
But some consistent themes emerge from what's available: Iran has few friends in the Mideast, even among nations that speak more accommodatingly in public for political reasons; the Iranian leadership is not united behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and the United States and its European allies must lean heavily on the government of Turkey for its limited insight into the affairs of Tehran, despite what they see as the erratic unreliability of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Some Middle Eastern states, particularly Saudi Arabia, have long opposed the militant Islamist regime in Tehran and warned that its nuclear programs pose a grave threat. That antipathy is duly reflected in the WikiLeaks documents, which include the widely reported insistence by Saudi King Abdullah that Washington must "cut off the head of the snake."
But the cables also reflect widespread fear among many other countries in the region, concern that runs deeper than has previously been known because their leaders are "hesitant to use harsh language in public statements," as the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, reported in a Jan. 26, 2010, cable classified "secret."
Their reasons vary. Cables indicate that some countries' leaders don't want to antagonize Tehran because of their dependence on Iran for its oil or its trade routes to Central Asia, while others fear a backlash from political opponents and everyday citizens sympathetic to the conservative Shia Islam espoused by Iran.
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