Contrary to claims of taking a more diplomatic approach with Iran, the Bush administration has significantly expanded US covert operations against the Islamic republic courtesy of a $400 million budget approved by Congress last year, thus foreshadowing preparations for war.

Citing current and former military intelligence and congressional sources, the New Yorker magazine reports the heavily funded operations, described in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by President Bush, entail destabilizing the Iranian government and its suspected nuclear weapons program via the financial support of minority and opposition groups, among them the US black-listed Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) and al-Qaeda linked Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.

US support of such dissident groups makes for strange bedfellows but is central to the Bush administration’s strategy of provoking a violent crackdown by Iran, resulting in a pretext for intervention and paving the way for the ultimate goal of regime change before the end of term in January 2009.

Such covert operations against Iran are not unprecedented, as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year.  These operations have included seizing members of Al-Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, as well as the pursuit, capture, and/or execution of “high-value targets” in the “war on terror”.  However the scale and the scope of operations in Iran, which also includes CIA initiatives with the JSOC, have now been significantly expanded.