Iran President: Wikileaks American Plot to Undermine Nation

After Wikileaks leaked numerous classified diplomatic cables showing that Arab regimes are extolling America to war against Iran (classic line: cut the head of the snake) the Iranian president - Uncle Momo - dismissed the cables and said that they will not undermine relations between Iran and other Gulf nations. The very day that Wikileaks released a document showing that Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri urged an attack on Iran as "necessary" he was a guest of Iran in Tehran and presented with an award by the Iranian defense minister.

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Iran's posture is not surprising. It sees little to gain by amplifying the documents and feeding a public feud with the Saudis et al. Register the private words of enemies and plot, but maintain a public face of sanguine manner.

And Iran's president has now gone a step further: blaming the United States for the Wikileaks leaks in order to undermine and sabotage relations between Iran and Gulf nations. It is a conspiracy by the Great Satan. If only the United States were that clever!

Spiegel Online: But the diplomatic reports were published against Washington's will and are damaging to the United States. The WikiLeaks disclosures are not a State Department PR campaign.

[Advisor to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] Esfandiar Rahim Mashai: Are you sure about that? How, then, did WikiLeaks gain access to the documents?

Spiegel: Presumably through a US Army private who had access to a central government database and has since been arrested.

Mashai: Do you believe that? Then you must be very naïve indeed. No, the United States is behind this deliberate leak. The Americans are trying to paint the world in black and white. They underscore the differences among nations and want to show everyone that peace is only possible in cooperation with them.

Spiegel: Do you question the authenticity of the more than 250,000 documents?

Mashai: I don't want to get into individual documents and their authenticity. But I have no doubt that a US government plan is behind this disclosure. When someone wants to suggest something, they include fake information with real information so as to create a certain impression. That's why each country has to analyze the documents that relate to it, which is what our experts in Tehran are doing now.

Spiegel: In other words, you do take the embassy reports very seriously.

Mashai: We are only examining them to figure out the Americans' tricks.

Does Iran not realize how unsophisticated their propaganda is? Do they ever bother to come with anything more intelligent than attributing everything to some omnipresent American conspiracy?

Or ponder an even scarier thought: does the Iran regime actually believe what it says?!