The Game

The leaked State Department cables reveal the diplomatic seduction that defines relationships in the Middle East

Lee Smith
Tablet Magazine
08 December '10

This is how U.S. diplomats used to talk about their work in the Middle East: “Every American ambassador in the region knows that official meetings with Arab leaders start with the obligatory half-hour lecture on the Palestinian question,” one with a long tenure in the Middle East told the New York Times before Thanksgiving. “If we could dispense with that half-hour and get down to our other business, we might actually be able to get something done.”

But that was in the pre-Cablegate age. One of the surprising (to some) revelations of the leaked diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks is that, counter to what we’ve been told for over a half century, the Palestinian question does not dominate the thinking of Arab officials.

American journalists still get the “half-hour drill”—I’ve gotten it most recently from the prime minister of Lebanon—but with U.S. diplomats, Arab rulers have more pressing issues to discuss. Indeed, the Wikileaks cables seem to confirm that our Arab allies are consumed by their fear of the Iranians. But are they really?

A number of analysts have spent the first weeks of the post-Cablegate era fighting a rear-guard action against the reality of Mideast diplomacy portrayed in the Wikileaks cables. Some are claiming that what the Arabs say in private to U.S. diplomats about Iran is not what they really mean, or that Arab security regimes do not represent the will of the Arab people. Others argue that those American analysts who find their positions vindicated in the released cables are just looking for any evidence to justify their desire to make war on Iran.

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