Iran rejects U.S. accusations it armed insurgents in Iraq with roadside bombs

Iran on Monday rejected U.S. accusations that the highest levels Iranian leadership has armed insurgents in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs.

Photo: Iran rejects U.S. accusations it armed insurgents in Iraq with roadside bombs

"Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday accused the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the sophisticated bombs that have killed more than 170 troops from the American-led coalition.

The deadly and highly sophisticated weapons the U.S. military said it traced to Iran are known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs. Three senior military officials in Baghdad said the "machining process" used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been traced to Iran.

But Hosseini said Iran's top leaders were not intervening in Iraq and considered "any intervention in Iraq's internal affairs as a weakening of the popular Iraqi government, and we are opposed to that."

The U.S. military presentation in Baghdad was the result of weeks of preparation as U.S. officials put together a package of material to support claims by President George W. Bush's administration of Iranian intercession on behalf of militant Iraqis fighting American forces.

The U.S. military experts alleged that the supply trial began with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which they said report directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reports AP.

The U.S. officials in Baghdad claimed the EFPs, as well as Iranian-made mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, have been supplied to "rogue elements" of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is a key backer of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Many key government figures and members of Iraq's Shiite political leadership have deep ties to Iran, having spent decades there in exile during Saddam Hussein's rule. But Iran has repeatedly denied that it has armed the Shiite militias in the neighboring country.

Hosseini also addressed another contentious issue between Washington and Tehran Iran's nuclear program.