A World of Irony

Report: U.S. ‘preparing the battlefield’ in Iran

29 June, 2008 (23:08) | Uncategorized

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

An Iranian flag flies outside the building containing the reactor of Bushehr nuclear power plant, south of Tehran.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh’s report, which appears in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN’s "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran. He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.

U.S. threatens military action against Iran
The Pentagon is actively preparing devastating bombing raids against Iran, … in violation of the treaty, to develop a whole new generation of battlefield or …

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we’ll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.

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"The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," Crocker said.

Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.

He said the program resulted in "a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos" inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country’s north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.

Preparing the Battlefield for Bush’s War on Iran
“U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran … The Oxford Research Group in February published a report entitled “Iran: Consequences of War. …

The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said "all options" are open in dealing with the issue.

Annals of National Security: Shifting Targets: Reporting & Essays: The …
… Administration; the agency’s most recent report found that Iran was far less … Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield by Seymour M. Hersh …

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at providing civilian electric power, and refuses to comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it halt uranium enrichment work.

Annals of National Security: The Iran Plans: The New Yorker
Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the … But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, “given the way the …

U.N. nuclear inspectors say Tehran held back critical information that could determine whether it is trying to make nuclear weapons.

Israel, which is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal, conducted a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean in early June involvi

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(Reuters)