United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

On Sunday, U.S Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker denied that the U.S. is conducting crossborder operations in Iran, as alleged by Seymour Hersh in a 6,300-word article posted the same day on the web site of the New Yorker, but Hersh said it was unlikely the ambassador would be informed about such operations.[1] -- A Los Angeles Times blog said the article was major news in Tehran on Monday, where "for both supporters and opponents of the Iranian government one thing stood out in the report above all else: the price tag. -- Hersh alleges that the U.S. Congress secretly OKd up to $400 million to fund such activities. -- To Iranians, that’s a lot of cash that you can throw around at a lot of people to do a lot of things. -- Television news shows went bonkers with the report. 'Sabotage of the U.S. in Iran and a new wave of psychological warfare,' was the title of one televised roundtable discussion."[2] -- The article promises to bring reformist groups under even greater suspicion inside Iran, commentators agreed; the article was rejected by some as "psychological warfare" against Iran, however. -- Dan Froomkin reported extensively on the article and on reaction to it on his White House Watch blog on the web site of the Washington Post.[3] ...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker denied Sunday the United States is conducting cross-border operations in Iran.

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran," Crocker said in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition" program.

Ryan made the comments in reaction to a report published Sunday in the *New Yorker* magazine that the Bush administration has been conducting covert military actions against Iran.

The article by Seymour Hersh is based on a classified Presidential Finding signed by President George W. Bush. Hersh said he did not disbelieve Crocker when he said he knows of no military actions against the Islamic republic.

"Sometimes it's better not to have the ambassador know. He may not know the extent to which we're operating deeply inside Iran," Hersh said.

WORD OF BUSH'S ALLEGED COVERT WAR HITS TEHRAN
By Ramin Mostaghim (Tehran) and Borzou Daragahi (Beirut)

New Yorker magazine investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s article this week alleging a major upping of the American campaign to fund and back covert operations against Iran became major news in Tehran today.

The 6,000-word article alleged a secret campaign to fund ethnic separatist groups fighting the Iranian government and U.S. commandos scooping up intel on clandestine forays onto Iranian soil.

But for both supporters and opponents of the Iranian government one thing stood out in the report above all else: the price tag.

Hersh alleges that the U.S. Congress secretly OKd up to $400 million to fund such activities.

To Iranians, that’s a lot of cash that you can throw around at a lot of people to do a lot of things.

Television news shows went bonkers with the report. “Sabotage of the U.S. in Iran and a new wave of psychological warfare,” was the title of one televised roundtable discussion.

One expert on the show called the Americans’ alleged move “state terrorism” that violated international law and the U.N. charter forbidding interference in the affairs of other countries.

Others called the U.S. Congress’ alleged approval of so much money late last year a strategic milestone that the Iranian government would have to address.

“We understand that the U.S. administration is sending conflicting signals,” Iranian lawmaker Kazem Jalali said. “On the one hand they send signals to say they want to negotiate. On the other hand, they try to bully.”

Iranian moderates and dissidents worry that that news of the price tag would bring civil society and pro-democracy groups under even greater suspicion.

Here’s Mohammad Marandi, head of the North American studies department at Tehran University, in a brief interview today with the Los Angeles Times: "From now on, the authorities in Tehran can refer to the article and say this is evidence that America is supporting the separatists and subversive groups. If the U.S. is looking to open the space in Iran, these kinds of budgets are counterproductive. From now on the social and political groups will be under more scrutiny, and the wall of mistrust between the two countries will be greater than before."

For his own sake, Marandi said he’s going to be extra careful to vet all invitations from abroad to make sure he’s not being brought to a U.S. government-sponsored event and all requests for visiting American scholars to make sure they’re not spooks.

Human rights attorney Mohammad Ali Dadkhah said word of the cash was bad news for those fighting slowly for change in Iran. He once turned down an offer from Holland to fund a human rights center where he works. “In our norms and tradition, only bad and corrupted politicians are under payroll of foreigners, no matter which country,” he said in an interview.

Even if the government doesn’t crack down, the news of the cash will strain ties between dissident leaders and ordinary people.

“People are very sensitive to any penny received by their intellectuals and dissidents from abroad for democracy,” Reza Kaviani, a student activist, told the Times.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the article or parts of it are wrong, or that even though Bush got cash approved, he hasn't spent it yet.

For their part, U.S. officials have either remained mum or denied some of the allegations in the article, particularly the claim of cross-border commando raids into Iran from southern Iraq.

Abul-Fazel Amoee, a Tehran political scientist close to the hardliners, was a skeptic. He told the Times he thought the article was probably nothing more than psychological warfare, and that Hersh was a has-been: "Seymour Hersh is not well-reputed in Iran any longer. His credentials have been tarnished because of his incorrect predictions regarding attacks on Iran. The U.S. government leaks news of the $400 million, and he writes the article. The U.S. administration is somehow continuing its psychological warfare operations."

Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker article describes an expansion of covert operations inside Iran and provides more evidence of Vice President Cheney's zeal to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- possibly by force -- before he and President Bush leave office.

Hersh writes: "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. . . .

"'The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,' a person familiar with its contents said, and involved 'working with opposition groups and passing money.'"

What's behind such a confrontational move? On CNN yesterday, Hersh said: "I do have some access into some of the thinking, particularly in the vice president's office. They do not want -- Bush and Cheney do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program, with, they believe, a nuclear weapons program. They simply don't believe the National Intelligence Estimate that came out late last year that said they haven't done anything in nuclear weapons since '03. They just don't believe it.

"So 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."

Yet Hersh describes considerable pushback from the Pentagon. He writes in the New Yorker: "Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House's concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. . . .

"A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, 'We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.' Gates's comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates's answer, the senator told me, was 'Let's just say that I'm here speaking for myself.'"

With preemption evidently off the table, some have speculated that Cheney is trying to come up with alternate ways the U.S. can be drawn into a conflict with Iran. See, for instance, my Aug. 10, 2007, column, "Cheney's Secret Escalation Plan?"

Hersh writes: "The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. . . .

"The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. . . .

"Cosgriff's demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn't do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. 'The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,' he said."

And Hersh describes what sounds like micromanagement of the covert operations from Cheney's office.

"'Everybody's arguing about the high-value-target list,' the former senior intelligence official said. 'The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney's office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he's getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.'"

Joby Warrick writes in the Washington Post: "The article drew a sharp reaction from administration officials, who denied that U.S. forces were engaged in operations inside Iran.

"'I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,' U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker said yesterday during an interview on CNN's ' Late Edition.'"

But appearing after Crocker on the same show, Hersh suggested that Crocker's denial was both narrow and potentially uninformed: "[W]hen you run secret operations. . . . you may not tell the ambassador everything. Sometimes it's better not to have the ambassador know."

Hersh summed up the dangers presented by Bush's actions this way: "We have the special operations people, and they're great people. They're very loyal soldiers. They do what they're told, going around, killing people around the world without ambassadors knowing it, without the CIA station chiefs knowing it, without Congress knowing.

"If that doesn't sound like -- you know, with this president, if that doesn't make people nervous, I don't know what else would, I can just tell you."

In October, Hersh reported that Cheney was pushing limited strikes against Iran, ostensibly in defense of American troops in Iraq. The White House responded by challenging Hersh's credibility -- while failing to refute any of his allegations.

Borzou Daragahi, blogging for the Los Angeles Times, points out that in an " interview with the Times last week, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said there was 'plentiful' evidence that the U.S. was waging a secret war against Iran, which included funding dissident groups, planting bombs, and supporting militants such as the ethnic Baluchi group Jundollah, cited in the Hersh article as a potential recipient of U.S. aid."

Najmeh Bozorgmehr writes in the Financial Times: "The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned at the weekend that Iranian retaliation for a strike on its nuclear facilities could include blocking oil routes and striking Israel with long-range missiles.

"'Any confrontation between Iran and non-regional countries would surely be extended to oil which would definitely lead to a huge increase in prices,' Mohammad-Ali Jafari told the state-owned Jam-e Jam newspaper."

Michael T. Klare writes in a Toronto Star op-ed that "the Bush administration's greatest contribution to rising oil prices is its steady stream of threats to attack Iran, if it does not back down on the nuclear issue. The Iranians have made it plain that they would retaliate by attempting to block the flow of Gulf oil and otherwise cause turmoil in the energy market. Most analysts assume, therefore, that an encounter will produce a global oil shortage and prices well over $200 per barrel. It is not surprising, then, that every threat by Bush/Cheney (or their counterparts in Israel) has triggered a sharp rise in prices. This is where speculators enter the picture. Believing that a U.S.-Iranian clash is at least 50 per cent likely, some investors are buying futures in oil at $140, $150 or more per barrel, thinking they'll make a killing if there's an attack and prices zoom past $200. . . .

"[I]f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect: declare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran. Such a declaration would take the wind out of the sails of speculators and set the course for a drop in prices."

David Bromwich blogs for Huffingtonpost.com: "The complete failure of congressional oversight, to which the article points, is a larger subject that will be with us until the election and beyond. For if the vice president and his neoconservative advisers have their way -- and they remain, in spite of setbacks, the most active, energetic, and ambitious faction within the Bush administration -- the U.S. will be at war with Iran or on the way to war by January 2009. And if that is so, it will matter less than we think who is elected in November. The momentum will be there; the country will be committed. . . .

"Vice President Cheney learned long ago that he can outplay the Democrats in the game of power, because he is willing to use power. The Democrats, by contrast, don't even want to be responsible for the power that they have."

Craig Crawford blogs for CQ: "If Democratic congressional leaders are signing on to George W. Bush's covert war against Iran, as Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker, does it really matter which party wins the White House in November? On this front at least, it seems that Bush gets a third term no matter which party wins."