News Roundup: Deal on Night Raids, Marines in Australia, Iran's Influence on Afghanistan From Afghanistan to Australia, we are tracking a lot of war-related news today. First, two stories from Afghanistan. In the first, Matthew Rosenberg reports on negotiations between the Afghan government and the United States military on the use of night raids. The covert nighttime raids on Afghan homes have been used for years, and have been deeply unpopular with both President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan public for just as long. Scenes From a Raid Follow the 10th Mountain Division on a night raid in eastern Afghanistan. But a new agreement on the raids appears to be close. Mr. Rosenberg writes, "President Hamid Karzai's government was close to completing a deal that would give the Afghan authorities legal oversight of the raids, while allowing American forces to retain a guiding role in conducting them." In addition to giving Afghan forces the lead in running the raids, the prospective deal would also bring them under the Afghan legal system, requiring "a court warrant within 48 hours of a raid in order to continue detention of any suspects." In our second Afghanistan story, Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker and Alissa J. Rubin write that after the accidental Koran burnings at a NATO air base in February, Iran secretly ordered its agents operating inside Afghanistan to exploit the anticipated public outrage by instigating violent protests, according to American officials. They say the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, described by one United States government official as having "a very active" program of anti-American provocation, sent its agents and surrogates into the streets to stir up trouble. Iran has denied any government-backed effort to foment unrest in Afghanistan. But American officials see a pattern of meddling aimed at increasing Iran's influence across the Middle East and South Asia. This broader campaign includes what American officials say was a failed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in October, and what appears to have been a coordinated effort by Iran to attack Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia earlier this year. But the absence of a sustained record of clear success leaves Western intelligence agencies puzzling over the country's surprisingly low level of professionalism, and whether Iran maintains the ability to carry out effective strikes against rivals beyond its traditional networks in the Middle East. And from Australia, our colleague Matt Siegel reports that 180 Marines arrived in the northern coast city of Darwin today. They are the first of 2,500 American troops to be deployed there as part of the agreement signed in November by President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia. Beijing immediately expressed concerns when the pact was made, accusing the U.S. of escalating tensions in the region. There is debate over whether the move is the start of the president's publicly-stated strategy to shift American military attention toward the Pacific, especially China, which has tended to be circumspect about its naval intentions. But Jeffrey Bleich, the American ambassador to Australia, was quick to dismiss what seemed to be a growing media consensus here that the increased military presence in the region was aimed primarily at containing China. If you just look at the Darwin decision, for example: we've had our Marines stationed in Central Asia, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are mostly an amphibious force. So they need to start training and doing amphibious maneuvers again, and we're looking for the best place to do it and the best partners to do it with, and Darwin is an ideal spot for it. The United States has had military bases and large forces in Japan and South Korea, in the north Pacific, since the end of World War II. But the Marines" arrival marks the U.S."s first substantive presence in the Pacific rim since the 1990s, when major bases closed in the Philippines, at Clark Field and Subic Bay.