Whistleblowing website reveals Arab call for US to bomb Iran

The Guardian, which is one of a number of newspapers to have advance sight of the 250,000 classified documents released by the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, said they include criticisms of David Cameron and of British military operations in Afghanistan.

On the international front, the cables were said to disclose that Arab leaders were privately urging the United States to carry out an air strike on Iran, according to an article on the newspaper's website.

It also said that US diplomats had been instructed to spy on the leadership of the United Nations.

The Guardian is one of five newspapers to have had access to the cables, along with the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El Pais in Spain.

A report on the New York Times website describes how last year Arab rulers urged the Americans to take military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme.

The King of Bahrain was quoted as saying that Tehran's nuclear programme "must be stopped". In another cable, he was said to have warned: "The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it". He was said to have been backed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who was said to have repeatedly urged Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time.

The cables were said to include a US assessment that Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could enable it to strike Western European capitals and Moscow and develop more formidable long-range ballistic missiles.

Other issues covered in the material include secret – and so far unsuccessful – US efforts to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor amid fears it could be diverted for use in an illegal nuclear device.

The Guardian said that the newspapers which had seen the leaks planned to publish extracts from the most significant cables but did not intend to "dump" the entire database into the public domain or to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. The article on The Guardian website gave no details of the claims concerning the member of the British royal family or of the requests for intelligence about MPs.

The leak of the material was last night strongly condemned by both the US and British governments. The White House said that the disclosure of confidential diplomatic communications on the front pages of newspapers around the world would "deeply impact" US foreign interests.

The Foreign Office also condemned the leaks but insisted that they would not affect Anglo-American relations.