NEW YORK, June 29: The Bush administration has begun a major “escalation of covert operations in Iran designed to destabilise that country’s religious leadership”, says columnist Seymour Hersh in a report in the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine on Sunday.

“These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilise the country’s religious leadership”, said Hersh quoting current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.

The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and

Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons programme. Hersh points out that “clandestine operations against Iran are not new.

United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with presidential authorisation, since last year.

These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the president’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.”