Last week WikiLeaks released several classified cables, raising issues which caused controversies around the world.

A number of the cables are about issues related to Iran.
According to one of the documents, some Arab leaders have exhorted the United States to cripple Iran’s nuclear program with airstrikes, a claim rejected by Arab officials and dismissed by Iran as highly dubious.
Another issue that was raised by the WikiLeaks release and hyped by some Western media outlets was the alleged sale of certain long-range missiles to Iran by North Korea.
On December 3, the New York Times published an article analyzing the cables relating to an alleged sale of missiles which concluded that while there are a range of opinions about the details of the weapons sale and the readiness of the missiles, what most U.S. officials appear to agree on is that at the very least North Korea sold a number of ballistic missile parts to Tehran in 2005.
The New York Times also mentioned a diplomatic cable from February 2010 describing an alleged sale of 19 missiles to Iran by North Korea that purportedly could give Tehran the ability to strike Western Europe and Russia.
What are the objectives behind raising such issues and why is there so much media hype about these cables?
First of all, the West seeks to provoke Iranophobia in the region by raising concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and defensive missile capabilities.
After WikiLeaks claimed that certain Arab states are concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and have urged the U.S. to take action to contain Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took advantage of the issue and said that the released cables showed U.S. concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear program are shared by the international community.
“I think that it should not be a surprise that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the U.S., the comments reported in the cables prove that Iran poses a serious threat in the eyes of its neighbors, and beyond the region,” Clinton said.
In addition, the allegations that missiles were sold to Iran that give it the ability to target Western Europe and Russia could cause concern for these countries.
And it seems that Western media outlets seek to sow seeds of discord between Iran and its neighbors.
Each time that WikiLeaks has made unfounded claims about Iran, Western media outlets have created a brouhaha and played up the issue, with the aim of undermining Iran’s relations with Russia, neighboring Arab states, Azerbaijan, and other regional countries.
Also, the claim about a missile sale to Iran seems to be meant to cast doubt on Iran’s capability to manufacture the missiles it needs to defend itself.
The claim that Iran has obtained long-range missiles from North Korea came shortly after Iran displayed its military and missile capabilities in war games in November.
Each time Iran successfully test-fires its domestically-manufactured missiles, the United States and other Western countries try to question Iran’s achievements and claim that Iran has obtained the missiles from other countries.
As the final point, it should be mentioned that there is a plausible hypothesis about the disclosure of classified U.S. documents by WikiLeaks, namely that the U.S. government itself is behind the release of the cables.
A number of the documents target the United States’ rivals, such as Iran, China, and Russia, and this supports the abovementioned hypothesis.
Some analysts say that the U.S. first released some credible classified documents about its own activities through WikiLeaks and then released some questionable documents about international issues with the aim of bringing to fruition its plans in areas that the U.S. government has not had great successes.