"This notion that somehow what the president was announcing was a precursor to planned military action -- a planned war against Iran, that's just not the case," Snow told reporters.

Bush vowed in a speech Wednesday that US forces would "seek out and destroy" any networks funneling weapons or fighters from Syria or Iran into Iraq, and said he had ordered another US aircraft carrier strike group to the region.

A senior US military official said Thursday that the United States planned to keep two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf for months -- the first such deployment since the first year of the Iraq war.

"The second carrier while there will not be just showing force, but will be actively involved in combat operations and providing air support. It will be a flexible, useful tool across the region," the official said.

The Pentagon also announced that an air defense battalion equipped with Patriot missile defense systems will go to the region.

The idea was to reassure regional allies about regional ballistic missile threats -- and Iranian missiles posed the most prominent threat, the official said.

Snow flatly denied that Bush "was trying to prepare the way for war with either country and that there are war preparations underway. There are not."

At the same time, US officials defended a nighttime raid by US forces on an Iranian office in the northern Iraq city of Arbil, saying six Iranians nabbed in the sweep had ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, which Washington accuses of fomenting violence in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Times, in an interview published Saturday, the raid was conducted under an order from Bush authorizing a military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country.

"There has been a decision to go after these networks," Rice was quoted by the Times as saying before leaving on a trip to the Middle East late Friday.

The tough words and actions, which came as the embattled US president laid out his new war-fighting strategy in Iraq, caused alarm from lawmakers and analysts who saw possible war preparations underway.

Democratic Party Senator Joe Biden warned Rice Thursday that sending US troops across Iran's border would trigger "a constitutional confrontation" between the opposition-held Congress and the White House.

"We will fight that out if the president moves -- I just want the record to show," said Biden, a candidate for his party's 2008 presidential nomination.

On Friday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday that Bush's speech "refers strictly to operations inside the territory inside Iraq -- not crossing the border."

"From a military standpoint, (there is) no need to cross the Iranian border," agreed General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told the panel that Iranian have been captured twice in Iraq in operations over the past couple of weeks.

US officials are especially concerned about a new, more deadly kind of improvised explosive device -- the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many US troops -- that they say bear Iran's fingerprints.

The new IEDS can pierce the armor of some US tanks and of the Bradley fighting vehicle, Snow told a conservative talk show host on Thursday.

US forces are stepping up effort to stop such weapons at the border "if possible," but also looking to disrupt supply lines that run from Iran to Baghdad and Syria to volatile al-Anbar province, Snow told AFP by telephone.

They are also raiding "safe houses" for militants, cracking down on their finance networks, and hunting buried stockpiles of weapons, he said.

The Syrian Embassy in Washington renewed its assurances Friday that it was cooperating with Iraq on strengthening security along their mutual border, but accused the United States of failing to follow suit.

earlier related report
UN-weary, US opts for unilateral moves against Iran
Jerusalem (AFP) Jan 13 - Recent US operations against Iranian interests in Iraq appear to signal a shift by Washington toward unilateral action after growing frustated with slow-moving UN diplomacy.

"We have had a strategy toward Iran, I think, that has been evolving to deal with the serious problems that Iran is causing," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in remarks released Saturday by the State Department.

Rice, who arrived in Jerusalem Saturday at the start of a Middle East tour partly aimed at rallying Arab nations against Iran's influence, defended a US raid Thursday against an Iranian office in Iraq.

US troops entered an Iranian office in Arbil and arrested five people suspected to be engaged in anti-US activities. Tehran condemned the operation.

Rice warned that similar actions would be undertaken. "We've done it a couple of times. We're going to keep doing it," she said aboard a plane heading to the Middle East.

In late December, the US military arrested two Iranian diplomats in Baghdad, then released them several hours later.

Faced with lawmakers' concerns in the Democratic-led Congress that Washington could launch a military intervention in Iran, the White House and the Pentagon have been trying to dispel fears and rumors of a conflict with Iran or Syria, after the announcement of a US military buildup in the Gulf.

President George W. Bush, in unveiling his new plan for Iraq, announced Wednesday the imminent deployment of Patriot anti-missile defense systems in the region to defend Washington's allies and support stability in the Middle East.

In addition, according to a senior US military official, Washington will send two aircraft carrier groups to the Gulf in the coming weeks.

US administration officials now describe Iran as the single greatest threat the United States faces in the Middle East.

Rice assured that the US was not giving up on diplomacy in dealing with Iran, particularly on the issue of its nuclear program that Washington suspects masks a weapons program. Iran insists it is for civilian energy production.

"The nuclear problem -- we're going to continue to leave the door open for diplomacy," Rice said in the State Department release.

"But frankly, the process that we went through to get this last (UN Security Council) resolution was -- even though I think the resolution itself is very good, the process was, I think, not really actually helpful because I think it exposed certain splits.

"Fortunately, we were able to bring it back together around an actual resolution," she said.

The US battled for months to overcome resistance from China and Russia to impose sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium-enrichment activities.

A Security Council resolution finally was passed on December 23, but the sanctions imposed were far weaker than those sought by Washington.

The first sign that Washington would act alone came from the US Treasury, which has barred two Iranian banks since September and pressured global financial firms to break their ties with Iran.

"We're going to keep designating Iranian banks," Rice said en route to the region.

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