Award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, who exposed prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, wrote that he was repeatedly told by US intelligence and military sources that "the next strategic target was Iran."

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign," a former high-level government intelligence official told the magazine.

"The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official said.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said in a statement that Iran's "apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment" than Hersh gives it.

The article "is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita wrote.

Hersh's sources "feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made," the statement added.

The Pentagon did not comment directly on Hersh's claim that President George W. Bush has authorized US commandos to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran.

According to The New Yorker, secret spying missions have been going on inside Iran for at least six months on declared and suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites.

The goal is to "identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," Hersh wrote.

A top government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told the magazine that Pentagon civilians -- especially Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz -- "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believe that Iran's clerical regime could not withstand a military blow and would collapse, the magazine reports.

US planners are getting foreign help, according to the magazine.

Israeli consultants are helping develop potential weapons targets inside Iran and US commandos are using Pakistan as a springboard for operations inside eastern Iran, the New Yorker said.

In return, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received guarantees that he will not have to hand over disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to international authorities for questioning, it said.

Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, in February took responsibility for transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

In Islamabad, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said "there is no such collaboration."

Pakistan does "not have much information about Iran's nuclear program so I think this report is far-fetched and it exaggerates facts which do not exist in the first place," Khan said.

"I do not think there is any substance in what has been reported. I think this is pure conjecture," he added.

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told CNN Sunday that Washington is "working with our European allies to help convince the Iranian government to not pursue weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons."

He said that it is "critical that the entire world focus on this issue. It is a threat that we have to take seriously, and we'll continue to work through the diplomatic initiatives that he set forth."

Hersh, however, said US hawks are convinced European negotiations will fail, and when they do, the United States will act -- possibly by mid-year.

"The next step is Iran. It's definitely there. They're definitely planning," said Hersh, also interviewed on CNN.

In the meantime the Pentagon is seeking reliable information on Iranian weapon sites, to avoid the embarrassment of Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

"We don't want another WMD flap. We want to be sure we have the right information," Hersh added.

The New Yorker article also said the Bush White House has solidified control over US intelligence operations, and that the Pentagon has gained new powers to conduct covert operations without oversight from the US Congress or CIA involvement.

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