Pat Dollard | Young Americans

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Wednesday denounced U.S. claims that Tehran funnels weapons and money to Shiite militias in Iraq, saying the top American military commander there has “no correct understanding of facts.”

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told Congress on Tuesday that Iran funds, equips and trains Shiite Muslim fighters who attack U.S. and Iraqi troops. Most of the weaponry used in recent clashes came from Iran, he said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini issued a statement Wednesday saying Petraeus has “no correct understanding of facts,” and accusing him of trying to blame America’s own Iraq failures on Iran.

“The Americans can’t attribute problems resulting from their own actions to others in order to justify their occupation,” the statement said.

The statement quoted Hosseini as saying the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has resulted in “the massacre and homelessness of innocent Iraqi people, and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, Iraq’s ambassador to Tehran, Muhammed Majid Al-Sheikh, was quoted Wednesday as saying the U.S. claims about Iranian interference in Iraq were “politically motivated.”

“Such reports are … aimed at undermining good ties between Iran and Iraq,” al-Sheikh told the Iranian Fars news agency.

But al-Sheikh said all armed groups in Iraq must nevertheless be disarmed, and members should join the political process.

“All groups not operating under the government command, Shiite or Sunni, have to hand over their weapons,” he said.

Last month, Iran helped broker a deal to end a recent bout of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and members of the most prominent Shiite militia in Iraq, the Mahdi Army loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr ordered his fighters off the streets on March 30. But the truce left the group intact and armed, and did not address its long-term threat to Iraq’s stability.

On Tuesday, Petraeus said Iran may have helped to end fighting with the Mahdi Army, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Tehran has a tactical advantage now.

“Iran, at the end of the day, clearly played a role as an arbiter,” Petraeus said in congressional testimony.

But he said it remained unclear “whether that strengthened them (the Iranians) or also made them realize that their actions have been destructive in helping a country they want to succeed, presumably.”

Alongside Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said many Iraqis have soured to al-Sadr’s fighters, and that Iran’s reputation has suffered because Iraqis assume the militias are backed by Tehran.

Meanwhile, Iran on Tuesday condemned for the first time rocket and mortar attacks against the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, which the U.S. blames on al-Sadr’s supporters. But it also denounced U.S. raids in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite neighborhood of the capital that authorities think al-Sadr’s militia uses as a base for such attacks.

Hosseini also praised Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdown on Shiite militias in the country’s south.

(AP)