In an interview with Qatar's Al Jazeera network scheduled for release on Friday, Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and possible GOP contender for the Presidency, calls for the United States to "sabotage" Iran's oil and gas infrastructure as part of a broad-based effort to bring down the Iranian regime.

In an interview with Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis for the Fault Lines programme, Republican Newt Gingrich said targeting Iran's refinery would spark an economic crisis that would destabilise the government in Tehran.

He said the US should "use covert operations ... to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime".

"I think we have a vested interest, the world has a vested interest, in a responsible Iranian government, just as we have a vested interest in a responsible North Korean government," he said.

While Barack Obama, the US president, has attempted diplomatic engagement with Iran following years of icy relations, some of his administration's critics have been calling for destabilisation instead.

But Gingrich qualified that such a tactic to destabilise would only be "one piece out of many".

"I think that the Reagan strategy in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s is the right strategy: we use economic, diplomatic, psychological pressures to try to change the regime."

Despite being oil-rich, Iran is dependent on gasoline imports to meet about 40% of its domestic consumption. Iran lacks sufficient refining capacity to meet its domestic gasoline needs, forcing Tehran to import large volumes of the motor fuel which it then sells at heavily subsidized prices domestically.

Though the United States is not currently sabotaging Iran's oil and gas industry, late last month the House Appropriations Committee approved by voice vote a measure prohibiting the US Export-Import Bank from helping companies that export gasoline to Iran or support its production inside Iran. The Swiss firm Vitol, the Swiss/Dutch firm Trafigura, France's Total, the Swiss firm Glencore, and British Petroleum, as well as the Indian firm Reliance are the main suppliers of gasoline to Iran.

The measure was sponsored by GOP Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois as an amendment attached to the annual spending bill to cover the expenses of the US State Department and other US foreign operations. I suspect what Newt Gingrich means by 'sabotage' is more than just cutting off trade financing to foreign companies that do business with Iran.