US Boosts Budget for Covert Ops in Iran

Time for the Revolutionary Guards to get a taste of their own medicine. I think some of those graves Iran has been digging will be filled up with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Guardian

The Bush administration has significantly increased covert military operations inside Iran aimed at destabilising the country's government, according to a US report published yesterday.

The report, in the New Yorker magazine, quotes military, intelligence and congressional sources as saying that CIA and special forces operations were ordered by George Bush in a "presidential finding" in the past few months. It said Bush sought - and congressional leaders from both parties approved - $400m (£200m) for the secret war, which includes abductions and assassinations.

According to the report's author, Seymour Hersh, the operations inside Iran have been under way since last year but have recently been "significantly expanded".

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However, Hersh - who broke several stories on the intelligence fiasco before the Iraq war- reported yesterday that there was considerable resistance from US generals and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, to White House pressure for an all-out attack.

The operations described by Hersh involve support for Baluchi and Arab separatist groups in Iran, "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".

There have been reports from Iran of assassinations of military officers, which Tehran has sometimes blamed on US and British operations. Both the US and Britain insist they are focused on diplomatic means to convince the Iranian government to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing.