Do you really believe that the Iranian government didn't already know what various other middle eastern governments thought of it? Ah, but diplomacy is so ofte

Do you really believe that the Iranian government didn't already know what various other middle eastern governments thought of it? Ah, but diplomacy is so often less about who knows what and so often about who has plausible deniability. Iran knows that the Saudis hate them. And the Saudis know that the Iranians know that they hate them and so forth. But to have it publicly acknowledged and on the record that they hate each other makes things more difficult if they ever need to cooperate. For instance, now that the Saudis are officially on the record as saying the US should bomb Iran, we can rule out the possibility of using the Saudis as a go-between or an "honest broker" for some kind of negotiated settlement with the Iranians. Not that it was necessarily going to happen, but the possibility is pretty much ruled out due to the embarrassment it would cause all round. It's not that Iran is going to attack Saudi Arabia because the King said mean things; it's just that the Saudis and the Iranians can no longer pretend publicly that they don't hate each other. That's just one example, there's any number of other ways that bringing unpleasant truths to the surface can spoil already-weak relationships, as anyone who has ever been in a weak relationship can tell you.