President George Bush has asked the Pentagon to devise an expanded bombing plan for Iran that can be carried out at 24 hours' notice, the New Yorker reported on Sunday.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the situation in Iraq has deteriorated and the Bush Administration has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The article said this has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and has propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

The article says the US military had expanded its mission from selecting potential targets connected to Iranian nuclear facilities and added sites that may be involved in aiding Shia militant forces in Iraq to its list.

That new strategy, intended to reverse the rise in Iranian power that has been an unintended consequence of the war in Iraq, could bring the countries much closer to open confrontation and risks igniting a regional sectarian war between Shia and Sunni Muslims, the New Yorker says.

'To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the administration has co-operated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. 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 Qaeda,' the article says.

The article says the key players behind the new policy are Vice President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser.