Rice: Bush approved raids on Iran

President George Bush authorised a series of US raids against Iranians in Iraq as part of a broad military offensive, his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said today.

Bush issued the order several months ago, Rice told The New York Times as she prepared to visit the Middle East.

She said the president acted “after a period of time in which we saw increasing activity” among Iranians in Iraq “and increasing lethality in what they were producing”.

Five Iranians were detained by US-led forces this week after a raid on an Iranian government liaison office in northern Iraq, a move that has frayed even further the relations between the two countries.

The US accuses Iran of helping provide roadside bombs that have killed American troops in Iraq, and a bitter stand-off already exists over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Rice, according to a story for today’s editions of the Times, described the military effort against Iranians in Iraq as a defensive “force protection mission”.

Concerns that Iran was trying to further destabilise the country also motivated the raids, she told the newspaper.

“We think they are providing help to the militias as well, and maybe even the more violent element of these militias,” she said.

Earlier US officials said there was no immediate plan to strike targets in Iran, but they would not rule out military action. Their comments came after Bush vowed in his prime-time address to the nation on Thursday to go after Iranian terrorist networks feeding the uprising in Iraq.

White House spokesman Tony Snow called any suggestions that war plans were under way an “urban legend”.

“What the president was talking about is defending American forces within Iraq, and also doing what we can to disrupt networks that might be trying to convey weapons or fighters into battle theatres within Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis,” he said.

Giving details of the Iraq raid, the US State Department said US-led forces entered an Iranian building in Kurdish-controlled Irbil because information linked it to Revolutionary Guards and other Iranian elements engaging in violent activities in Iraq.

There was no truth to reports that Iran was carrying out legitimate diplomatic activity at the site, state department spokesman Tom Casey said.

But Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, said the Iranians were working in a liaison office that had government approval and was in the process of being approved as a consulate.

In Iran, foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the US raid constituted an intervention in Iranian-Iraqi affairs.