“There is the perception in the Gulf that Iran is really on the rise,” said Emile El-Hokayem, research fellow at the Stimpson Centre, a Washington think tank. “Washington wants to prepare for a potential showdown.”

What Mr. Hokayem said was simply part of a wider and covert U.S. plan, as described in The Age in its recent editorial, to prevent Iran from carrying on with its nuclear activities, a plan that also includes providing Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with extensive military aid.

Judging by the U.S.’s failure in Iraq and the recent U.S.-backed UN resolution imposing economic sanctions on Tehran, it is apparent that, one way or the other, the U.S. has its sights firmly set on bringing regime change to Iran.

A team of U.S. officials has been assigned the task of carrying out the U.S. covert plan against the Iranian regime for over a year now.

Among methods pursued by the group, known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG), is coordinating with Iranian dissidents as well as inflaming international outrage against Iran and its nuclear program, which the U.S. alleges is being used as a guise for hidden developments aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

The group, modeled on the Iraq Policy and Operations Group, set up in 2004 to twist information and co-ordinate U.S. action in Iraq, claims and publicizes the claim that Iran played a key role in the 1994 attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina that led to the death of 85 people and wounded 300 others.

On July 18th 1994 at the Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association community center in Buenos Aires, an attack resulted in the complete destruction of the seven-storey building and shocked the Jewish community in Argentina, the largest in Latin America.

The probe was surrounded by rumors and accusations of cover-ups, as well as lack of competence and lack of will to do anything concrete to catch the attackers.

While the alternative media focuses on the nuclear threat posed by the Middle East’s most dangerous nuclear country, Israel, the mainstream media refuses to blame the real terrorists and persistently portrays Iran as the “real” nuclear threat.

Even in UK, a key U.S. ally, the BBC and other so-called liberal media outlets demonstrate their ability to “manufacture consent” for elite interests.

Back to the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group and the involvement of the U.S. officials with it and the extensive aid they provide such group with, it’s said that Pentagon officials plan to request from the Congress, probably next month, to increase funding for transfers of military hardware to allies in the Persian Gulf, in an attempt to accelerate plans for joint military activities.

Their request, according to The Age, will include more advanced missile-defence systems and early-warning radar to prevent or detect Iranian missile strikes.

The U.S. financing of the so-called pro-democracy activities in Iran reached $A107 million last year, and are expected to double next year, according to the senior State Department official.

Contrary to repetitive claims by the U.S. that it’s not seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime, like it did more than three years ago in Iraq, one former U.S. official who attended a preliminary meeting of the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, supported the opinion that the goal of the group is to oust the Iranian regime.

The group’s task, i.e. isolating the Islamic Republic, is consistent with the American President and his persistence not to engage in talks with Iran and Syria

“Iran is the key to everything at the strategic level — the biggest problem we have faced in a long time,” said a State Department official involved in the group.

The ISOG, headed by Elizabeth Cheney, seeks encouraging “regime change in Iran. It’s no secret that Cheney has over $80 million at her disposal to promote democracy in Iran. But ISOG isn’t simply about promoting democracy. It’s about helping to craft official policy, doing so not with one but two countries in its sights,” Lawrence F. Kaplan wrote April 10, 2006, in The New Republic Online.

“The question is whether democratic reform can be achieved before Iran becomes a nuclear power,” which is “Cheney’s job,” Sarah Baxter wrote March 5, 2006, in the UK’s Times. “In the State Department she is referred to as the ‘freedom agenda co-ordinator’ and the ‘democracy czar’ for the broader Middle East.”

The U.S. “democratic mission” has disgracefully failed in Iraq, and is likely to fail in Iran.