>The fact that their plans would be written in a foreign language (never mind a foreign alphabet) would have been more than adequate to keep it secret from British intelligence.
This is one of the stupidest statements I have ever seen.
This is one of the stupidest statements I have ever seen.
Plus, in my experience, Arabic is a difficult language for people who grew up speaking romance languages to learn. Perhaps not as difficult as Japanese, but still much more difficult than German or French.
That's probably where they get them.
We may have a stifling bureaucracy and an overstretched military, but at least the British Foreign Office actually has local knowledge and people who speak the language.