The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.....
Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN's leadership.These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistlebowers' website, also reveal Washington's evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
These include a major shift in relations between China and North Korea, Pakistan's growing instability and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:
• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme
• Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime.
• Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan.
• Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family.
The US has particularly intimate dealings with Britain, and some of the dispatches from the London embassy in Grosvenor Square will make uncomfortable reading in Whitehall and Westminster. They range from serious political criticisms of David Cameron to requests for specific intelligence about individual MPs.
The cache of cables contains specific allegations of corruption and against foreign leaders, as well as harsh criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from tiny islands in the Caribbean to China and Russia.
The material includes a reference to Vladimir Putin as an "alpha-dog", Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia" and Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.
The cables name countries involved in financing terror groups, and describe a near "environmental disaster" last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium. They disclose technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and include a profile of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.
The cables cover secretary of state Hillary Clinton's activities under the Obama administration, as well as thousands of files from the George Bush presidency. Clinton personally led frantic damage limitation this weekend as Washington prepared foreign governments for the revelations. She contacted leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, France and Afghanistan.

Der Spiegel: Q & A: What the diplomatic cables actually reveal
Der Spiegel has posted a Q&A about the 'Embassy Files' release. Among the details:

• Included are 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives
• One cable dates back to 1966, but most are newer than 2004
• 9,005 documents date from the first two months of 2010
• Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País have had access to the files and reviewed them.

None of the documents are classified 'Top Secret', but only 'Secret' at the highest classification rating. This was also confirmed by Politico's White House correspondent Mike Allen on Twitter, quoting the US administration.
According to Der Spiegel, just over half of the cables are not subject to classification, 40.5 percent are classified as "confidential" and only six percent or 15,652 dispatches as "secret." 2.5 million U.S. employees have access to SIPRNET material, where these cables originated.
A graphical representation of the worldwide distribution of the cables appears on the Spiegel site.
Der Spiegel is expected to go live with the full edition at 22:30 Sunday, local time, according to a front page announcement.
Read more
Update: Spiegel article may have been posted too early. It appears to have been taken down at the moment.

Each telegram consists of date, author, recipient, classification and the actual message text. Often it includes names of informants or names are mentioned. The SPIEGEL and SPIEGEL ONLINE have therefore decided not to make the mass of documents accessible, but to quote only from individual dispatches or document a single cable, in which the names of informants have been deleted - unless the name of the informer has political relevance.

[Of the Secret Cables] 4330 of them are so explosive that they have been designated as "Noforn", that should not be made available to foreigners.

Unlike the U.S. military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomatic telegrams are easier to read. They lack abbreviations in the text and are usually created in an office under no time pressure.

Much is written in the faith and sent that the logs do not get exposed to the public during the next 25 years. This probably explains why the ambassadors and envoys of the United States also engage in much gossip and report much hearsay to the headquarters.

Diplomacy is only calculative to the outside. Internally diplomats use a straightforward language.

The cables mostly contain assessments of the political situation in the country, meeting protocols, background information about personnel decisions and events - or personality profiles of individual politicians.