Bush campaign against Iran’s religious leaders: Wash Post

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration intends to
mount a campaign against Tehran’s religious leaders in its
efforts to build international pressure against Iran’s nuclear
program, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Board members of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution,
who met two weeks ago with President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Stephen
Hadley, told the Post they had the impression that the
administration had shifted to a more robust policy against the
Tehran government.

“The message that we received is that they are in favor of
separating the Iranian people from the regime,” said Esmail
Amid-Hozour, an Iranian American businessman who serves on the
Hoover board.

The newspaper also said Bush, according to aides, has
personally been spending more time on the Iran issue and his
advisers have invited 30 to 40 specialists for consultations in
recent months.

Iran, which has fought to avoid being taken to the U.N.
Security Council over its nuclear program, suspects Bush is
using the nuclear issue as a pretext for promoting a change in
the Islamic republic’s government.

This week the U.N. Security Council is due to take up
Iran’s case after the International Atomic Energy Agency sent
the council a report saying it could not verify that Iran’s
nuclear plans were purely peaceful.

MORE IRAN STAFF AT STATE

The Post also reported that the State Department created an
Iran desk last week, with 10 staff working full-time on Iran,
compared with only two last year. The department also is
launching more training in the Farsi language and is planning
an Iranian career track, which has been difficult without an
embassy there.

Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns told the Post
that the department will also add staff in Dubai, which is part
of the United Arab Emirates, as well as at other embassies in
the vicinity of Iran, all assigned to watch Tehran. He called
the new Dubai outpost the “21st century equivalent” of the Riga
station in Latvia that monitored the Soviet Union in the 1930s
when the United States had no embassy in Moscow.

The campaign also includes expanded Voice of America
broadcasts into Iran to 4 hours a day from 1 hour currently.

Richard Haas, a former State Department policy planning
director in Bush’s first term, told the newspaper he believed
the U.S. should try direct negotiations with Tehran, but added:
“The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change
rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy.”