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Bush gets money (400 m. $) to destroy Iran

The White House has been reported to have secretly stepped up covert operations inside Iran with the aim of destablising its leadership.

President George W Bush requested and received funding of $400 million (£200 million) for the plan after he made a secret appeal to Congressional leaders last year.

The money is likely to be used for operations carried out by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, according to the New Yorker magazine.

The appeal for funds “was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change” said the magazine.

A source cited the contents of the appeal - known as a Presidential Finding - as involving “working with opposition groups and passing money”.

The magazine claimed that American special forces had been conducting cross-border operations into Iran from southern Iraq since last year.

This was denied yesterday by Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq.

“I’ll tell you flatly that US forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,” he told CNN television.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, is believed to be adamantly opposed to taking military action against Iran. The Bush administration is believed to be concentrating on building a legacy of relative stability in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East in the final six months of Mr Bush’s second and final term in office.

The administration is seeking to bolster its record through multi-lateral diplomacy, as illustrated by last week’s deal with North Korea over disclosure of its nuclear programme. A unilateral attack on Iran by either the US or Israel could eclipse this.

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations and a leading foreign policy hawk, told The Daily Telegraph last week that he believed the Bush administration had ruled out military action but that it might acquiesce in Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The magazine said the move by Mr Bush represented a “major escalation” in the “scale and the scope of the operations in Iran” intended to foment dissent against the The Tehran regime, which has made little attempt to convince the world that its nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful.

Washington suspects Iran is secretly working to build an atomic weapons arsenal. Iran insists its nuclear activities are for civilian energy purposes.