"Cut Off the Head of the Snake": Saudi King Urged U.S. to Bomb Iran

The first great revelation of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables — released on November 28, 2010 — was the gap between what Arab leaders said about Iran in public and what they urged in private.

According to a classified cable dated April 20, 2008, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly exhorted the United States to "cut off the head of the snake" by launching military strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear program. The cable detailed a meeting between the King and Saudi princes on one side and General David Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the other. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, "recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program," the cable said. "He told you to cut off the head of the snake."

The Saudis' stated fear was Shi'ite Iran's rising influence across the region, particularly in neighboring Iraq. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, pushed instead for tougher sanctions — a travel ban, restrictions on bank lending — though he did not rule out military action.

The cables showed the private hawkishness extended beyond Riyadh. A November 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Manama recorded Bahrain's King Hamad arguing "forcefully for taking action to terminate [Iran's] nuclear program, by whatever means necessary." A 2006 cable from Abu Dhabi captured the UAE's view that the threat from al Qaeda would be minor if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

The American side was more cautious. The cables showed Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed a military strike would only delay Iran's program by one to three years. Washington had repeatedly said the military option was on the table — and had just announced a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia — but its generals viewed a strike as a last resort that could ignite the wider Middle East.

The cables' real explosive was not the military planning. It was the exposure: a region whose leaders denounced confrontation in public while demanding it in private, now reading their own words in the newspapers.