Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.

The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

Tempers flared in Iran on Wednesday as authorities held a funeral for Iranian nuclear physicians Majid Shahriari, who was killed in one of two reported attacks against the country's atomic brain trust.

Iranian officials blamed the West and Israel for the attacks.

"They mention the names of our scientists in their [United Nations] resolutions and provide the Zionist dogs with a copy and tell them to kill," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Mazandaran province, according to the semi-official Fars news agency 

Well, this is awkward.

Many of the same Arab governments that called for an investigation into U.S. war crimes based on the WikiLeaks Iraq war log continue to ignore revelations in the latest trove of leaked documents that show Arab leaders pushed the United States to use military force against Iran.

Headlines in the heavily state-controlled Saudi media were dominated by news of King Abdullah's ongoing physiotherapy, while the top story in the Emirati newspaper, Al Bayan, centered on Prince Mohamad bin Rashid's praise for the country's progress toward "transparency." Most mentions of the WikiLeaks documents in official Arabic news outlets were scrubbed of any reference to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing instead on U.S. attempts to control the damage to its diplomatic relations.

Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, considered one of the most credible pan-Arab news outlets, tread lightly in its coverage and generally refrained from repeating the most incendiary quotes from the heads of neighboring states.

A story from Iran this weekend combines elements of tribal banditry and nuclear espionage. 

The ethnic Baluchi group Jundollah claimed on its website (Persian link) that it had kidnapped an Iranian nuclear scientist and would begin forcing him to tell his secrets unless the Iranians released 200 prisoners from the group.

But the story may turn out to be more like a tale from filmmakers the Coen brothers than an espionage thriller. Iranian authorities say the man who was kidnapped, Amir-Hossein Shirvani, is not a nuclear scientist, rather a laborer who was fired from a nuclear facility in Isfahan four years ago.

It took Iran several months since the reports that it was hardest hit by the computer worm known as Stuxnet but recently authorities conceded that about 30,000 IP addresses had been infected with the malware. The worm affected computers of staff at the Bushehr nuclear plant as well as Internet service providers, but officials say major systems at the plant have not been damaged. 

Specialists say the malware of unprecedented expertise was custom-made to target and control particular industrial automation software and manipulate it from remote locations. It uses the Internet to spread, but the worm isn't Internet-based, suggesting "patient zero" was infected physically -- presumably by a USB device. Used for espionage or sabotage, the software infects a computer immediately but can remain latent until activated. At any given moment, there are millions of "zombie  computers" around the world awaiting activation, not unlike the way spy agencies use sleeper cells or agents, writes Guy Grimland (in Hebrew) of TheMarker.

Was there a hint of a dare in Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi's rejection Friday of allegations that Iran was working on a secret nuclear site?

Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, denied claims by an outlawed fringe group that the Islamic Republic had begun construction of a secret nuclear fuel enrichment facility northwest of Tehran. 

On Thursday the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, or MKO, a cult-like Iranian exile group with ties to neoconservative opponents of Iran’s nuclear program in Washington, presented satellite photos to reporters and referred to unspecified intelligence sources that it said showed Iran was creating a secret nuclear enrichment plant in the  village of Bahjatabad, near the city of Abeyk in Qazvin province.

Salehi denied the allegation. 

If there's a nuclear facility at the site, he said, prove it.

“There are no nuclear installations, or what can be technically defined as one, in Iran that the International Atomic Energy Agency is unaware of,” he told the semi-official Mehr News Agency. “We have no such installations where we enrich uranium. If they really are aware of such installations perhaps they would like to tell us about it so that we can thank them.” 

The United Nations confirmed last week that Iran had violated several U.N. resolutions by activating a second set, or "cascade," of centrifuges for enriching uranium at its nuclear plant in Natanz, leaving many wondering what this latest development meant.

The West has accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a charge Tehran denies. Babylon and Beyond recently spoke with former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright and asked him to put Iran's latest move into perspective. 

B&B: Centrifuges spin at high rates of speed to enrich uranium that could be used for a nuclear weapon or to generate electricity. What does it mean that Iran has activated a second cascade of centrifuges?

Albright: Activating the second cascade produces enriched uranium more efficiently, but it doesn’t really lead to increased production. The reason for concern is that we have to wonder why they are doing it. They don’t need to produce 20% enriched uranium efficiently. You only need a little 20% for the research reactor, so we have to conclude that they are trying to learn how to operate this centrifuge cascade. If they were going to make weapons-grade uranium, they would definitely need to learn to make it more efficiently.

The military option against Iran's nuclear program always seems to be discussed in the context of one table or another. On the table, off it or under it, the possibility of a strike lurks in the background, a semi-abstract code for something potentially awesome -- and not in the cool sense of the word.

President Obama told Israeli television in a recent interview (in itself an interesting occurrence) that the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon was unacceptable and that the issue has been the No. 1 priority in foreign policy of the last 18 months. "We continue to leave the door open for a diplomatic resolution of this challenge, but I assure you that I have not taken options off the table," he told Channel 2. 

Again, the table. So whose table is it?

The ultimate nightmare scenario could soon become a reality:

Israeli strike aircraft cross into Iranian airspace and hit the nuclear facilities at Natanz, Esfahan and Qom, as well as the laboratories of the University of Tehran, killing one of Iran's leading nuclear scientists along with dozens of researchers and a janitor. 

Iran retaliates by hitting Tel Aviv with long-range missiles and fanning the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, engulfing the Middle East in a protracted regional war and triggering a global economic crisis over oil prices.

This terrifying outcome is increasingly likely if Israel carries out a reportedly impending military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to a new study by the Oxford Research Group, a leading security think tank.

The paper, titled "Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects," was released Thursday following ominous statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Fox News channel in which he called Iran "the ultimate terrorist threat today."

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, flatly stated in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times that a once much-touted deal between Iran and the international community on Tehran's nuclear program wasn't going to happen without big changes.

 The dormant deal, dubbed the TRR (short for Tehran research reactor), involved exchanging a chunk of Iran's low-enriched uranium stockpile for fuel to power a medical reactor. 

But that's not to say there's no possibility of some kind of compromise between Iran and the West on the controversial nuclear program, Amano said.

"If you look back at the history of the Iranian nuclear issue, it has not been static," he told the Times. "There were good days and not so good days. We have cloudy days or sunny days."

The United Nations' chief nuclear watchdog said resolving the standoff over Iran's nuclear program was one of his major concerns. 

What about the deal that Brazil tried to broker with Turkey and Iran, on TRR?

It contains some positive elements and I pay high tribute to the political initiatives. We certainly received the declaration of the three prime ministers from Tehran, which was signed on May 17. Then, we received the letter from Iran, officially giving agreement to the Tehran declaration. I received it on May 24. And on June 9, I received a letter from Russia, France and the U.S., putting some questions and I conveyed it to Iran. Now I am waiting for the answer from Iran.

So, the deal is not dead yet?

The IAEA is in the position to facilitate the provision of nuclear fuel to Iran, and not only for Iran but for other countries. In the case of Iran, they requested it from us and we are in a position to facilitate the provision. My predecessor, Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, made a proposal. The proposal, as was proposed in October, without any change, will not be agreed. Iran made some new proposals. The three countries put questions.

Is it a public relations offensive meant to ease pressure on it from the United States, or is the United Arab Emirates finally cracking down on illicit trade with Iran?

The Dubai-based Gulf News reported Monday that the government has shut down more than 40 companies with alleged links to the Iranian government or the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The UAE, and its glittery city-state of Dubai in particular, have been criticized in the past for acting as a conduit for banned materials and laundered money in and out of Iran.

Earlier this month, the United Nations approved a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, citing its unwillingness to cooperate over its nuclear enrichment program. The sanctions singled out 40 companies linked to Iranian financing, imports and shipping, including 15 tied directly to the Revolutionary Guards.

A number of those companies were based or maintained offices in the Emirates, sometimes hiding behind front companies that were registered in a third country. As a result, all Iranian-owned companies in the UAE have come under suspicion, even those that are not subject to sanctions.

"Everyone is being investigated," Theodore Karasik, director of research and development at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, told Babylon & Beyond.

'"These closures have been going on for a while,"  he said.

Lebanon's government split into two rival camps, deeply divided on whether to abstain or oppose the latest round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. Though Lebanon ultimately abstained from the vote, the question of how Lebanon as a country should view Iran unearthed domestic political fissures.

The Cabinet of Ministers failed to reach consensus on the sanction issue, with 14 in favor of abstention and 14 opposed to sanctions. Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, Nawaf Salam, had to keep the Security Council waiting for an hour until Beirut gave him directions on how to vote. Ultimately, Lebanon had no choice but to  abstain.