Bush's covert game in Iran?

Is the United States conducting clandestine operations within Iran?

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh thinks so, and reports in this week's issue that Congress agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert activity against Iran -- aimed at destabilizing the country's regime by backing minority groups like the Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi.

The story was knocked down quickly by the administration -- "I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran." U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told CNN.
Hersh dismissed the denial, arguing that "when you run secret operations ... sometimes it's better not to have the ambassador know."

Saying that he does not know why the administration would be increasing covert operations in Iran, Hersh told CNN in an interview today that he believes that President Bush and Vice President Cheney "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program.... They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of offices next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program."

The Times' Babylon and Beyond blog, which reports on the Middle East, has more details here.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Posters of Iran's late spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (left) and current supreme leader Ali Khameni (sixth to the left) are included in a row of Hezbollah martyrs lining a street in southern Lebanon. Credit: RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images

Those nuclear facilities in Iran

Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked today about a rumor percolating below the surface in Washington, speculation that President Bush, just before he leaves office, will turn out the lights on Iran's nuclear facilities. The further subtext: If the White House won't end Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear program, the Israelis will.

Friday, the New York Times reported that Israel had conducted exercises -- with more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 jets -- in what U.S. officials said looked like a dress rehearsal. Sunday the Israeli newspaper Maariv called the story a Pentagon leak designed "to deter Iran and increase pressure on it to cooperate" with international nuclear watchdogs.

Back at the White House, Perino said speculation was being fueled more by the news media than any evidence.

"And what I can tell you is that President Bush believes that we can solve this issue diplomatically, and that everyone's preference is to solve it diplomatically," she said, "not just here in the United States but with our allies and certainly with Israel."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Handout/Getty Images

Elizabeth Cheney speaks out on, well, everything

Elizabeth Cheney, the former State Department official seated here between her sister, Mary, and her father Vice President Dick Cheney, is not going quietly into the night.

The mother of five children, Cheney has been involved in the State Department's Mideast policy. Talking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a few weeks ago, she said the "time for diplomacy" with Iran is "rapidly coming to an end."

Then today, Cheney went on MSNBC and blasted the Supreme Court (for its ruling on habeas corpus for detainees that she called "a misinterpretation of the Constitution") and took issue with Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

A former staffer for failed Republican presidential candidate former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee,  Cheney called McCain "a unique kind of Republican" who "a lot of us in the party, including myself, didn't support in the primaries."

As for Obama, Cheney said his call for an end to the Bush taxes is "exactly wrong for the nation at this time" and called his policy toward international diplomacy "naive."

Asked by MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell about "an October surprise," in administration action toward Iran, Cheney made no effort to douse speculation. "It is absolutely clear that neither the United States nor Israel can tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran," she said.

Like father, like daughter?

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Ed Reinke/Associated Press

Bush in Europe: the focus is Iran

President Bush's European tour is taking him to some of the loveliest capitals in the world: Paris, Rome and the often-overlooked Lubljana, in Slovenia.

But as he makes his way through much of what Donald H. Rumsfeld denigrated as "Old Europe," as well as Slovenia, his gaze will be decidedly eastward. The undercurrent of the trip will be Iran.

That's the word from Stephen J. Flanagan, director of the international securities program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

To be sure, Bush will be spending time at the Vatican. The famously sightseeing-averse president is even planning to take in a demonstration of the fancy footwork of the Lipizzaner stallions in Slovenia.

But throughout his private meetings with officials of the European Union in Slovenia, and then with leaders in Italy, Germany, France and Britain, he is "going to try to stiffen European resolve on Iran," Flanagan said in a pre-trip briefing.

--James Gerstenzang

Photo: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg News

Is Bush Planning to Attack Iran? Hadley says....

It has been the question that has dogged President Bush and his national security team more than perhaps any other during their final year in office: Is the president planning to attack Iran before he leaves the White House?

Administration officials do little to dampen the speculation--thus feeding it. Of course, as they seek to pressure Iran to scale back what the administration insists is a nuclear weapons program and Iran says is a program to develop civilian nuclear power, such pressure, even if built on nothing more than public speculation, may serve a purpose.

During a briefing called to discuss Bush's farewell tour of western Europe next week, Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, left the situation perfectly.....muddy.

Is the glass half empty? He said there was....

Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press