The accusations were welcomed by Sunni politicians, who have long maintained that Tehran supports Shi'a death squads and militias. "We diagnosed this problem a long time ago," Salim al-Jabouri, a prominent Sunni member of Iraq's parliament, told TIME. "It was expected that the Americans would come to the same conclusion."
But Shi'a politicians, who comprise the largest block of the parliament and have close ties to Tehran, dismissed U.S. claims as propaganda by a Bush administration seeking to deflect blame for the American military's failure to curb the growing violence in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has maintained a studied silence; Ali al-Dabbagh, his official spokesman, told TIME the government has no comment on the latest accusations. But an official in the Prime Minister's office questioned the credibility of U.S. intelligence, pointing to recent reports of evidence-fudging at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. "They need a scapegoat, so they conveniently point to their old enemy, Iran," said the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media. "But these days American intelligence is a discredited commodity. Who can believe them?"
Meanwhile, Iraq's largest Shi'a party denied U.S. claims that two Iranian agents were seized at the home of the party's leader, Abdel-Azziz al-Hakim. Ridha Jawad Taki, a spokesman for Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRII), said the two were diplomats and were grabbed as they were on their way to the home of President Jalal Talabani, Hakim's neighbor. "They were invited by the President to discuss the security situation," he said. "And they were released after two days."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1588147,00.html?cnn=yes
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