U.S. Has Reportedly Sent Teams Into Iran

Since at least last summer, the United States has conducted “secret reconnaissance missions” inside Iran in an effort to identify three dozen or more suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed with airstrikes and commando raids, according to a report Sunday in the New Yorker magazine.

The existence of the missions, described in an article by veteran journalist Seymour M. Hersh, was not attributed to any source or document.

Hersh’s article quoted an unnamed government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.”

A senior White House aide denounced the article in a televised interview but did not cite any specific point of contention.

“I’ve seen excerpts of this story,” said White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “I think it’s riddled with inaccuracies, and I don’t believe that some of the conclusions he’s drawing there are based on fact.”

Bartlett said President Bush was using diplomacy in an effort to persuade the Iranian regime not to develop or acquire any weapons of mass destruction.

“We’re working with our European allies to help convince the Iranian government to not pursue weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons,” Bartlett said. “It’s critical that the entire world focus on this issue. It is a threat that we have to take seriously.”

Speculation about Bush’s intentions toward Iran is apt to heighten as his administration enters its second term this week. In his State of the Union address three years ago, Bush alleged that Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, formed an “axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”

Bush in that speech said that Iran was “aggressively” pursuing weapons of mass destruction while exporting terrorism.

Leaders of the Iranian government have said that the nation has been interested only in developing nuclear power to generate electricity. On Nov. 14, Iran announced that it would suspend all aspects of its uranium-enrichment program in exchange for incentives offered by European nations on trade and peaceful nuclear technology.

The next day the International Atomic Energy Agency said that its inspectors had uncovered no new evidence of concealed nuclear activities or an atomic weapons program in Iran.

In Tehran on Sunday, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told the Associated Press that environmental samples taken from a military complex over the weekend by U.N. nuclear inspectors would prove that Iran’s program was for peaceful purposes and not the making of weapons.