As Iran has pressed ahead with its nuclear program and (in the Bush administration’s view) sent covert operators into Iraq to foment and arm sectarian strife, America and Britain have pushed back. Iranian officials blamed Western intelligence agencies for the recent disappearance of Ali Reza Asgari, a former Revolutionary Guards general and deputy Defense minister who vanished in Turkey several weeks ago. (American officials say they know nothing of Asgari’s fate.) There is a risk, of course, of small incidents blowing up. Mitchell Reiss, the State Department’s policy-planning chief until 2005, worried about this, says a former senior administration official who requested anonymity when discussing internal matters. According to the official, Reiss urged his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to listen to a U.S. Navy recommendation that Iran and the United States hold talks to establish procedures for boarding ships in the gulf—in order to avoid potential clashes. The proposal has not been acted upon. (The State Department declined to comment.) Likewise, Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, has warned the Bush White House that cracking down too harshly on Iranian operatives in Iraq could spark a wider military confrontation with Iran. The British Navy, which has aggressively patrolled in the northern gulf, looking for Iranian arms smugglers, is also concerned about Iranians’ beefing up their naval forces in the gulf. As Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of Coalition naval forces, said recently, “It’s a bit like with the Russians at the height of the cold war.”
