The New Yorker report "is baseless … It fully contradicts with the policy and practices of the Lebanese government," a short statement said.

The New Yorker reported that the United States is stepping up covert operations in Iran in a new strategy that risks sparking an "open confrontation" and benefits Sunni radicals.

Seymour Hersh reports that U.S. military and special-operations teams have increased their activities inside Iran, entering from Iraq to gather intelligence and to pursue Iranians who operate inside Iraq.

Hersh also reports in the March 4 issue, citing unnamed sources, that the U.S. Defense Department recently formed a special planning group to plan possible attacks on Iran "that can be implemented, upon orders from the president, within 24 hours."

The planning group, though, has in the past month turned its focus from targeting Iran's nuclear sites and attempting to oust the current Tehran leadership to hitting targets "involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq."

The investigative reporter said U.S. clandestine operations in Iran, Lebanon and Syria aim at strengthening Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weakening Iran-backed Shiites.

He said that since last August U.S.-led forces in Iraq have been rounding up Iranians there to be interrogated, and were at one point holding 500 -- though some were just humanitarian and aid workers.

The operations under the new tack have been guided by Vice President Dick Cheney and rely heavily on Saudi Arabia's national security advisor Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according to the report.

However, Hersh said, "a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al-Qaida."

"The 'redirection,' as some inside the White House call the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims."

Some U.S. aid distributed to Sunni groups in Lebanon falls into the hands of radical groups, U.S., European and Arab officials told Hersh, who named Fatah al-Islam, based in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and Osbat al-Ansar in a Palestinian refugee camp in the country as beneficiaries.

The article also suggested the U.S. policy was benefiting the radical Sunni Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and that Druze leader Walid Jumblatt had encouraged U.S. support for the group in a meeting late last year with Cheney.

But unnamed officials told Hersh that the approach was dangerous, enhancing radical groups which also consider the United States an enemy.

"We're spreading the money around as much as we can," a former senior intelligence official said.

"In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. ... It's a very high-risk venture."

In some cases, the clandestine operations rely on Saudi Arabia and Bandar, who was the ambassador to Washington for two decades, to provide the funding so that operations remain secret.

Hersh wrote that, according to one source, a government consultant, Bandar and the Saudi government have assured Washington that they will keep any dangerous Sunni groups potentially strengthened by the new policy under control.

Hersh wrote, however, that one of the key Shiite targets of U.S. policy in the Middle East, Hezbollah -- which Washington says is directed by Tehran -- said it opposed a sectarian Islamic conflict and was willing to talk with the United States.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reportedly told Hersh in an interview conducted in December that he believed the U.S., together with Israel, was trying to split Islam, and to partition Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

However, he said: "If the United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or meetings."

Sources: Naharnet, Ya Libnan