John Byrne - The Pentagon is drawing up plans for a "surgical strike" against an alleged insurgent training camp in Iran, according to the UK Sunday Times' Michael Smith.

Attributing the assertion to Western intelligence officials, Smith asserts that US officials have become increasingly frustrated with Iran's Republican Guard force -- an elite corps of the country's military -- which the Bush Administration has designated a terrorist group. Western officials have accused Iran of helping arming rebel militias in Iraq, and have accused Iran of supplying IEDs.

Smith was the first to reveal the Downing Street Minutes, an account of a secret 2002 meeting between Bush Administration officials and British intelligence surrounding Iraq, in which MI6 director Richard Dearlove remarked that facts around Iraq were being "fixed" around a policy for war.

"US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force," Smith writes."'If the situation in Basra goes back to what it was like before, America is likely to blame Iran and carry out a surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan,'" he quotes a defense official as saying.

Nuclear facilities 'not targets'
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker and RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna revealed internal Pentagon planning in a buildup to a potential Iran conflict. Since the reports ran, however, rhetoric about Iran has been toned down and concerns of a potential all-out war have diminished.

American officials are opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Smith says. They believe, however, that an attack on a militant camp could send a message to the Republican Guard.

CBS News reported last week about a potential strike on Iran.

Read all at: THE RAW STORY