Iran attacks US by surrogates
Topic: Gaza/Palestine, Lebanon
May 22 The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.Under the law, the CIA needs an official presidential finding to carry out such covert actions. The CIA is permitted to mount covert "collection" operations without a presidential finding. "Presidential findings" are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders. The Blotter Mid June Defense Secretary Gates says the Iranians are supplying arms to Afganistan's Taliban. CNN A parliamentarian allied with the US is assassinated in Lebanon by shiites. This is a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia guerrilla movement and political party which looks to Iran and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for spiritual guidance and more. BBC News Hamas takes over Gaza " indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to control the events inside the Occupied Territories" RFE/RL Also, once divided by the Arab-Israeli conflict, the region is now the battleground for three other rivalries: the United States and its allies pitted against an Iran-Syria alliance in a proxy war regionwide, secular governments confronted by rising al-Qaeda extremism, and autocratic governments reverting to draconian tactics to quash grass-roots movements vying for democratic change. Washington Post