The cable continued, "The crown prince regretted that the United States did nothing to counter the communist threat in the region. Fahd further noted that Iran was threatening Bahrain, Kuwait, and other Arab countries of the Gulf. There had, however, not been a word of caution to Iran from President Carter to reassure not only weak countries, like Bahrain, but also America's other friends in the area and around the world."
Of course, the Saudi fears of a communist wave tossing out Khomeini and then rolling across the oil-rich Middle East never materialized. Three decades later, the Islamist government of Iran remains largely intact, threatened mostly by dissidents who favor only a modestly less religious political system.
Calling in a Debt
In 1979, the greater danger to the sheikdoms came -- not from communism -- but from the ascetic lifestyles of Khomeini and Iran's other theocratic rulers, which contrasted with the playboy opulence of the Saudis and other royal families from the region.
In effect, a nervous Fahd was calling due the post-World War II American commitment to protect the security of the Persian Gulf sheikdoms in exchange for reasonably priced oil. One secret State Department cable, dated July 5, 1979, bluntly explained the point: "Oil for security is still the essence of the special relationship" with the Saudis.
The new cables from WikiLeaks add a few insights into how Iran was contained in those years after the revolution, largely by the military intervention of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
According to one of those cables, in December 2005, Saudi King Abdullah lashed out at George W. Bush's administration for ignoring his warnings against invading Iraq in 2003, noting that the new Iraqi government was dominated by Shiites with close ties to Iran.
"Whereas in the past the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein had agreed on the need to contain Iran, U.S. policy had now given Iraq to Iran as a "gift on a golden platter,'" the U.S. Embassy cable quoted the king as complaining.
Abdullah's comment offered a glimpse into the Realpolitik that has been played for generations in the oil-rich region.
A "top secret" U.S. document that I uncovered in congressional files in 1994 claimed that -- according to senior Middle East leaders -- even President Jimmy Carter, the renowned peacemaker, engaged in this ruthless big-power politics.
The document, a two-page "Talking Points" prepared by Secretary of State Alexander Haig for a briefing of President Reagan, recounted Haig's first trip to the Middle East in April 1981.
In the report, Haig wrote that he was impressed with "bits of useful intelligence" that he had learned. "Both [Egypt's Anwar] Sadat and [Saudi Prince] Fahd [explained that] Iran is receiving military spares for U.S. equipment from Israel," Haig reported.
This fact might have been less surprising to Reagan, whose intermediaries allegedly had collaborated with Israeli officials in 1980 and early 1981 to smuggle weapons to Iran behind President Carter's back. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
But Haig followed that comment with another stunning assertion: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd."
Questions about Carter
In other words, according to Haig's information, Saudi Prince Fahd (later King Fahd) claimed that Carter, apparently hoping to strengthen the U.S. hand in the Middle East and desperate to pressure Iran over the stalled hostage talks, gave clearance to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran.
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