some of them containing the names of people US diplomats talked to about sensitive topics, including Iran.
In Iran, the Alef website published what it said were some of the names of Iranian sources. The list was not very shocking. It included such people as Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate, and Ebrahim Yazdi, who last held public office in Iran in 1979. These people speak constantly to American reporters and give their opinions and interpretations about events in Iran, but they do not hold any inside information.
All the identifiable Iranian names are of people hostile to the regime.
What is often forgotten about the cache of WikiLeaks documents 
is that none of them are classified Top Secret. Most are not even classified at all. They are just routine diplomatic communications. Others are classified Confidential, the lowest grade of classification, or Secret, the middle grade of classification.
No name of a truly confidential source would be transmitted under such classifications. The names of actual spies would not be transmitted at all; they would be cited in cables only by code names and numbers.
But many of the classified cables included the names of people who would undoubtedly prefer that it not be known they ever spoke with US officials, even just to give their opinions. That would be true of Ebadi and of Yazdi, who was the foreign minister in the provisional government just after the revolution. Yazdi and the cabinet quit in November 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini refused to free the American embassy hostages.
No one living in Iran—and Yazdi still does live in Iran—would like to see his name cited in a US diplomatic cable. Far lesser contacts have gotten Iranians many years in jail.
Agence France Presse said 30,000 of the 251,287 documents posted contain the word “Iran.”
Some of the cables cited the names of people diplomats had talked to followed by the admonition “(strictly protect).” McClatchy Newspapers said it searched the cables for that term and found 1,900 citations for “(strictly protect).” But the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia said it made the same computer search and found 3,381 instances where “(strictly protect)” or some variant appeared. Those would include people of all nationalities—including Americans.
McClatchy said that among those so listed were the CEO of ConocoPhillips oil company (an American firm) and the US soap company Proctor & Gamble.
Others, however, might have cause for concern, including Shiite clerics in Saudi Arabia, religious leaders in Vietnam and businessmen who hold contracts in Iran and report back to US diplomats after each visit there.
The volume of Iranians who would be interviewed by US diplomats is constrained by the obvious fact that the United States has no diplomatic mission in Iran. US diplomats, however, do make a point of seeking to interview Iranians visiting in such places as Dubai and Baku.
The Alef website, believed linked to Ahmad Tavakkoli, one of the senior leaders of the conservative faction in the Majlis, said the US diplomatic cables cited such Iranian sources as: Hashem Aghajeri, member of an old-line reformist party, the Mujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, who has often been in jail and is vocally critical of the government, having recently angered many by saying, “We are not monkeys to follow one leader”; Abdollah Momeni, a human rights activist for many years who was among those arrested and tried just after the 2009 post-election disorders; Ali-Reza Rajai, a leader of the party founded by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and now headed by Ebrahim Yazdi; Mohammad Musavi-Khoini, a cleric who was a member of the first elected assembly that wrote the Constitution and briefly an early head of state broadcasting; Mohsen Sazegara, a longtime opponent of the regime who now lives in the United States; Roberto Arbitrio, an official of the UN counter-narcotics office in Tehran; Ali-Reza Nurizadeh, a journalist and loud opponent of the revolution who fled after the revolution and is based in London; and Hossain Maliki, a blogger who is currently imprisoned; as well as Shirin Ebadi and EbrahimYazdi.
Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based advocacy group, has long been supportive of WikiLeaks, but broke with it over the publication of the cables without any redactions. It said, “While it has not been demonstrated that lives have so far been put in danger by these revelations, the repercussions they could have for informants, such as dismissals, physical attacks and other reprisals, cannot be neglected.”
The New York Times said several diplomats told the paper that many sources abroad were now declining to speak to them for fear of exposure. Many others, however, took it all as a laugh, saying something like, “Please quote me correctly so when it’s published I’ll sound good.”
The diplomats knew of no one physically harmed so far, but said they knew of one German party official and one Turkish journalist who had been fired.