US to Expand Covert Operations in Iran - Joby Warrick, Washington Post
The Bush administration told Congress last year of a secret plan to dramatically expand covert operations inside Iran as part of a long-running effort to destabilize the country's ruling regime, according to a report published yesterday. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from spying on Iran's nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country's ruling clerics, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901881.html
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Oil Cash May Prove A Shaky Crutch - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post
Faced with rapid inflation and growing international concern about his country's nuclear ambitions, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is relying on huge increases in oil and gas revenue to insulate his government from internal and external pressures. Some of the same Western countries taking steps to compel Iran to stop uranium enrichment are also the biggest consumers of its oil and gas. The European Union said last week that it would freeze the assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest, in keeping with UN sanctions. The EU is also the leading global consumer of Iranian oil and gas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901978.html
Preparing the Iran Battlefield - Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker opinion
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program. Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Israel vs. Iran - Jeffrey Kuhner, Washington Times opinion
The winds of war are sweeping the Middle East. Recent press reports reveal Israeli military has been conducting secret exercises in preparation for possible air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicts Israel will launch a devastating air campaign before the end of President Bush's term. Tehran poses an existential threat to Israel - and to the West. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to "wipe Israel off the map." He boasts that the end of the "Zionist regime" is "near." Mr. Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary Islamofascist, who believes Tehran is the strategic anchor for a global caliphate. He wishes to spread radical Shi'ite Islam across the Middle East - and eventually the world.
http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jun/29/israel-vs-iran/
US-Israel Moment of Truth? - Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times opinion
Israel's message to its only ally, the United States was quite clear. Either President Bush orders military action or Israel will have to strike on its own. It can't wait till a new US president is sworn in because the new White House tenant could well be Barack Obama. And Mr. Obama almost certainly would not approve an Israeli air strike without first going several extra miles on the UN and Western diplomatic track. This could even lead to the kind of rift in Israeli-US relations that occurred when President Eisenhower ordered French, British and Israeli forces out of Egypt in the 1956 Suez War.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/06/30-june-swj-news-oped-and-even/
It is worth recording that Andrew Cockburn anticipated many of Sy Hersh's reportage on covert finding for US operations in the broad Lebanon-Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. These may be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html and http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05302008.html. The moral here that the context may be somewhat wider than Iran -- and thus less indicative of any immediate Administration to attack Iran.
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