Region | Iran
Bush endorses CIA plans for regime change in Iran
President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert 'black' operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed.
- By Tim Shipman, The Telegraph Group Limited
- Published: 00:00 May 28, 2007
Washington: President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert 'black' operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed.
Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.
Under the plan, pressure will be brought to bear on the Iranian economy by manipulating the country's currency and international financial transactions. Details have also emerged of a covert scheme to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme, which United Nations nuclear watchdogs said last week could lead to a bomb within three years.
Security officials in Washington have disclosed that Tehran has been sold defective parts on the black market in a bid to delay and disrupt its uranium enrichment programme, the precursor to building a nuclear weapon.
A security source in the US said that the presidential directive, known as a 'non-lethal presidential finding', would give the CIA the right to collect intelligence on home soil, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and emigres within the US.
"Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information," he said.
The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime. The plans, which significantly increase American pressure on Iran, were leaked just days before a meeting in Iraq today between the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart.
No use of force
Tensions were ramped up last week when Iran seized what the US regards as a fourth 'hostage'. Three academics who hold dual Iranian-American citizenship are being held, accused of working to undermine the Iranian government or of spying. An Iranian-American reporter with Radio Free Europe, who was visiting Iran, has had her passport seized. Another Iranian American, businessman Ali Shakeri, was believed to have been detained as he tried to leave Tehran last week.
Authorisation of the new CIA mission, which will not be allowed to use lethal force, appears to suggest that Bush has, for the time being, ruled out military action against Iran.
However, the CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior State Department official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said industrial sabotage was the favoured way to combat Iran's nuclear programme "without military action, without fingerprints on the operation".
He added: "One way to sabotage a programme is to make minor modifications in some of the components Iran obtains on the black market."
The White House National Security Council and CIA refused to comment on intelligence matters.
No information on detainee
Iran's Foreign Ministry said yesterday it has no information about an Iranian-American consultant working for George Soros' Open Society Institute who the New York-based organisation claims is being detained.
Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant who has also worked for the World Bank, was detained on or around May 11, according to the Open Society Institute. The group is a private foundation. "We have no exact report about him from official authorities," said Mohammad Ali Hosseini, spokesman of Iran's Foreign Ministry, when he was asked about Tajbakhsh, who is also a senior research fellow at the New School in New York City.
- AP
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