U.S. order: Kill or capture Iranian agents inside Iraq

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian military and intelligence operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Iran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials.

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Iran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders.

The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between the U.S. and Iran into the center of a chaotic Iraq war.

U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Iraq, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats.

Officials said U.S. and British special forces in Iraq, which will work together in some operations, are developing the program's rules of engagement to define the exact circumstances for using force.

Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, designated by President Bush to be the top military commander in Iraq, told Congress in writing this week that a top priority will be "countering the threats posed by Iranian and Syrian meddling in Iraq, and the continued mission of dismantling terrorist networks and killing or capturing those who refuse to support a unified, stable Iraq."

"Kill or capture"

The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall, along with other measures meant to curtail Iranian influence from Afghanistan to Lebanon, and ultimately to shake Iran's commitment to its nuclear efforts. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, but the United states and other nations say it is aimed at developing weapons. For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have had a "catch-and-release" policy, secretly detaining dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.

However, senior administration officials decided a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Iran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Iran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.

"There were no costs for the Iranians," said one senior administration official. "They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back."

Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said.

But for three years the Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni factions. Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, told the Senate recently that the amount of Iranian-supplied materiel used against U.S. troops in Iraq "has been quite striking."

Some administration officials say targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard Command, and specifically a Guard unit known as the Quds Force, should be as much a priority as fighting al-Qaida in Iraq. The Quds Force is considered by Western intelligence to be tasked directly by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to support Iraqi militias, Hamas and Hezbollah.

A senior official described military, intelligence, political and diplomatic strategies the administration is planning to target Iranian interests across the Middle East.

The White House has authorized operations that can be carried out against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. And U.S. officials are preparing international sanctions against Iran for holding several dozen al-Qaida fighters who fled across the Afghan border in late 2001. They plan more aggressive moves to disrupt Iran's funding of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and to undermine Iranian interests among Shiites in western Afghanistan.

Consequences

Officials said Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq.

Two officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though a supporter of the strategy, is concerned about the potential for errors, as well as the ramifications of a military confrontation between U.S. and Iranian troops on the Iraqi battlefield.

Rice insisted on, and got, a senior official to personally oversee the program to prevent it from expanding into a full-scale conflict, officials said

The departments of Defense and State referred all requests for comment on the Iran strategy to the National Security Council (NSC), which declined to address specific elements of the plan and would not comment on some intelligence matters.

But in response to questions about the "kill or capture" authorization, Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the NSC, said: "The president has made clear for some time that we will take the steps necessary to protect Americans on the ground in Iraq and disrupt activity that could lead to their harm. Our forces have standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council." Advocates of the new policy — some of whom are in the NSC, the vice president's office, the Pentagon and the State Department — said that only direct and aggressive efforts can shatter Iran's growing influence.

With aspects of the plan also targeting Iran's influence in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, the policy goes beyond the threats Bush issued earlier this month to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria" into Iraq. It also marks a departure from years past when diplomacy appeared to be the sole method of pressuring Iran to reverse course on its nuclear program.

The decision to use lethal force against Iranians inside Iraq began taking shape last summer, when Israel was at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Officials said a group of senior Bush administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level counterterrorism meetings agreed that the conflict provided an opening to portray Iran as a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the death squads in Iraq.

Among those involved in the discussions, beginning in August, were deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism adviser Juan Zarate, the head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, representatives from the Pentagon and the vice president's office, and outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief Henry Crumpton.

At the time, Bush publicly emphasized diplomacy as his preferred path for dealing with Iran. Standing before the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 19, Bush spoke directly to the Iranian people: "We look to the day when you can live in freedom, and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace."