Administration Strategy Stirs Concern Among Some Officials   

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

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of  suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The  "catch and release" 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.   

 Last summer,however,senior administration officials decided that a more  confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew  and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing.

The country's  nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions  against the Tehran 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 operational training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite  militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the  violence against Sunni factions. Gen. Michael V. 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."   "Iran seems to be conducting a foreign policy with a sense of dangerous  triumphalism," Hayden said.   

 The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by President Bush in a  meeting of his most senior advisers last fall, along with other measures  meant to curtail Iranian influence from Kabul to Beirut and, ultimately, to  shake Iran's commitment to its nuclear efforts. Tehran insists that its  nuclear program is peaceful, but the United States and other nations say it  is aimed at developing weapons.   

 The administration's plans contain five "theaters of interest," as one  senior official put it, with military, intelligence, political and diplomatic strategies designed to target Iranian interests across the Middle  East.   

The White House has authorized a widening of what is known inside the  intelligence community as the "Blue Game Matrix" -- a list of approved  operations that can be carried out against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. And U.S. officials are preparing international sanctions against  Tehran for holding several dozen al-Qaeda fighters who fled across the  Afghan border in late 2001. They plan more aggressive moves to disrupt Tehran's funding of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and to undermine  Iranian interests among Shiites in western Afghanistan. 

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran's  Revolutionary Guard, 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. Though U.S. forces are not known to have  used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials  have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.   

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 Tehran and  Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war.   

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that  Tehran 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. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to  put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq,  Afghanistan and elsewhere.   

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 that 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. 

In meetings with Bush's other senior advisers, officials said, Rice insisted  that the defense secretary appoint a senior official to personally oversee  the program to prevent it from expanding into a full-scale conflict. Rice  got the oversight guarantees she sought, though it remains unclear whether  senior Pentagon officials must approve targets on a case-by-case basis or  whether the oversight is more general.   

The departments of Defense and State referred all requests for comment on  the Iran strategy to the National Security Council, 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." 

 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. In his last  few weeks as the top commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. sought  to help coordinate the program on the ground. One official said Casey had  planned to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a "hostile entity," a  distinction within the military that would permit offensive action.   Casey's designated successor, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, 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."   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.

A less  confident Iran, with fewer cards, may be more willing to cut the kind of  deal the Bush administration is hoping for on its nuclear program. "The  Iranians respond to the international community only when they are under  pressure, not when they are feeling strong," one official said.   

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. 

R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said  in an interview in late October that the United States knows that Iran "is  providing support to Hezbollah and Hamas and supporting insurgent groups in  Iraq that have posed a problem for our military forces." He added: "In  addition to the nuclear issue, Iran's support for terrorism is high up on  our agenda."   Burns, the top Foreign Service officer in the State Department, has been  leading diplomatic efforts to increase international pressure on the  Iranians. Over several months, the administration made available five  political appointees for interviews, to discuss limited aspects of the  policy, on the condition that they not be identified.   

Officials who spoke in more detail and without permission -- including  senior officials, career analysts and policymakers -- said their standing  with the White House would be at risk if they were quoted by name. 

 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-Qaeda, 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 A. 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."   Two weeks later, Crumpton flew from Washington to U.S. Central Command  headquarters in Tampa for a meeting with Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S.  commander for the Middle East. A principal reason for the visit, according  to two officials with direct knowledge of the discussion, was to press  Abizaid to prepare for an aggressive campaign against Iranian intelligence  and military operatives inside Iraq. 

 Information gleaned through the "catch and release" policy expanded what was  once a limited intelligence community database on Iranians in Iraq. It also  helped to avert a crisis between the United States and the Iraqi government  over whether U.S. troops should be holding Iranians, several officials said,  and dampened the possibility of Iranians directly targeting U.S. personnel  in retaliation. 

 But senior officials saw it as too timid. "We were making no traction" with "catch and release," a senior  counterterrorism official said in a recent interview, explaining that it had  failed to halt Iranian activities in Iraq or worry the Tehran leadership.  "Our goal is to change the dynamic with the Iranians, to change the way the  Iranians perceive us and perceive themselves. They need to understand that  they cannot be a party to endangering U.S. soldiers' lives and American  interests, as they have before. That is going to end."   A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the  strategy.   "This has little to do with Iraq. It's all about pushing Iran's buttons.

It  is purely political," the official said. The official expressed similar  views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United  States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away  from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States' increasing inability to  stanch the violence there.   

But some officials within the Bush administration say that 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-Qaeda in Iraq. The Quds  Force is considered by Western intelligence to be directed by Iran's supreme  leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to support Iraqi militias, Hamas and  Hezbollah.   In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the  Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred  to Guard members as "terrorists."

 Such a formal designation could turn  Iran's military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its  members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.   Asked whether such a designation is imminent, Johndroe of the NSC said in a  written response that the administration has "long been concerned about the  activities of the IRGC and its components throughout the Middle East and  beyond." He added: "The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force is a part of  the Iranian state apparatus that supports and carries out these activities."   Staff writer Barton Gellman and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to  this report.