SAUDI Arabia and other countries in the region urged the US to attack Iran and destroy its nuclear facilities, The Guardian reported citing the secret US diplomatic communications leaked by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
The revelations of secret memos from US embassies across the Middle East expose behind-the-scenes pressures in the scramble to contain the Islamic Republic, which the US, Arab states and Israel suspect is close to acquiring nuclear weapons.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was recorded as having ‘frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme’, said the paper which was among the few media outlets that have been given access to the over 250,000 diplomatic cables by Wikileaks.
‘He told you (Americans) to cut off the head of the snake,’ the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah’s meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.
King Abdullah warned the Americans that if Iran developed nuclear weapons ‘everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia’.
The documents also describe how other Arab allies of the US have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran. (IANS)
