"There's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran," Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON, May 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Alarmed by intelligence information alleging that al-Qaeda operatives having hand in the May 12 car bombings in Riyadh might be hiding in Iran, Pentagon officials are pressing hard for triggering public uprising in Iran to topple the Iranian regime, a leading U.S. news paper reported Sunday, May 25, citing U.S. administration officials.

Senior Bush administration officials will meet Tuesday, May 27, at the White House to discuss the evolving strategy toward the Islamic republic, The Washington Post said.

The U.S. claims that it has "very troubling intercepts" before and after the Riyadh tripling bombings. The intercepts suggested that al Qaeda operatives in Iran were involved in the planning of the bombings.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran of harboring al Qaeda members. He said that "there's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran."

Even the State Department, which had encouraged some form of engagement with the Iranians, appears inclined to accept an aggressive policy towards Iran, especially if Iran does not take any visible steps to deal with the suspected al Qaeda operatives before Tuesday, officials said.

But State Department officials are concerned that the level of popular discontent there is much lower than Pentagon officials believe.

On May 18, the Post said that U.S. officials believed that an Egyptian al-Qaeda leader who allegedly helped organize the triple bombings in Riyadh that killed 34 people last week is hiding in Iran.

Yawning Rift

The Riyadh bombings, in effect, have ended the tentative signs of rapprochement between Iran and the United States that had emerged during the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.  

U.S. and Iranian officials had met periodically to discuss issues of mutual concern, including search-and-rescue missions and the tracking down of al Qaeda operatives.

But, after the car bombings in the Saudi capital, the Bush administration canceled the next planned meeting, lingering the already yawning rift.

"We're headed down the same path of the last 20 years… An inflexible, unimaginative policy of just say no," one State Department official said.

On February 8, the daily revealed that U.S. officials met with Iranian diplomats in an unidentified European country in January, in what is seen as a U.S. attempt to neutralize Tehran before its war on Iraq.

What deepens the rift further is U.S. deep concerns about Iran's nuclear weapons program, which has the support of both elected reformers and conservative clerics.

The Bush administration has pressed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to issue a critical report next month on Iran's nuclear activities.

Officials have sought to convince Russia and China -- two major suppliers of Iran's nuclear power program -- that Iran is determined to possess nuclear weapons, a campaign that one U.S. official said is winning support, the daily added.

Skepticism

However, a senior administration official, who is skeptical of the Pentagon's arguments, said most of the al Qaeda members -- fewer than a dozen -- appear to be located in an isolated area of northeastern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan, about which the Iranian government does not know much about it. 

"I don't think the elected government knows much about it," he said. "Why should you punish the rest of Iran," he asked, just because the government cannot act in this area?

He described the area as “a drug-smuggling terrorist haven” that is tolerated by key members of the Revolutionary Guards in part because they skim money off some of the activities there.

Flynt Leverett, who recently left the White House to join the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the administration may be taking a gamble.

"It is imprudent to assume that the Islamic Republic will collapse like a house of cards in a time frame that is going to be meaningful to us," the daily quoted Leverett as saying.

"What it means is we will end up with an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States with regard to our terrorist concerns," he said.

Ever since President Bush labeled Iran last year as part of an "axis of evil" -- along with North Korea and Iraq -- the administration has struggled to define its policy toward the Islamic republic, which terminated relations with the United States after Iran's 1979 revolution.

The administration never formally adopted a policy of "regime change," but it also never seriously tried to establish a dialogue, the Post said.

At one of the meetings, in early January, the United States signaled that it would target The MEK soon became caught up in the policy struggle between the State Department and the Pentagon.

After the end of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, the U.S. military arranged a cease-fire with the Iraq-based camps of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), a major group opposing the Iranian government.

The U.S. move infuriated the Iranians as some Pentagon officials began to envision the MEK as a potential military force for use against Tehran, much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

But under pressure from State Department, the White House earlier this month ordered the Pentagon to disarm the MEK troops -- a decision that was secretly conveyed by U.S. officials to Iranian representatives at a meeting in Geneva on May 3.