WikiLeaks cables: Arab media hold back on revelations about their leaders

Many commentators, however, hint at a conspiracy as Israel escapes damaging exposure

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with Barack Obama. Riiyadh's official line is to dismiss the WikiLeaks documents.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed the WikiLeaks revelations of Arab hostility to Iran as worthless "psychological warfare". But the idea that 250,000-plus pages of classified US documents actually shed any new light on Middle Eastern realities has also been widely dismissed by many Arabs or simply ignored by their governments.

In Riyadh, where King Abdullah was shown to have repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran to "cut off the head of the snake", the only official reaction has been to say sniffily that the documents "do not concern the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nor does the kingdom have any role in producing them, nor is it aware of their authenticity".

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