U.S. Copts Association

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military has “multiple” detainees who say the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah is providing training near Tehran for Iraqi militants, a senior military official said on Monday.

Colonel Donald Bacon, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said interrogation transcripts from these detainees were recently given to the Iraqi government.

But it was unclear if the information had been carried to Tehran by a delegation from Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite alliance, which visited Iran last week to urge an end to Iranian backing of Shi’ite militias attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Bacon said the camps near Tehran were run by Iran’s Qods force, a wing of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards.

“We have multiple detainees who state Lebanese Hezbollah are providing training to Iraqis in Iranian (Qods force) training camps near Tehran,” he told Reuters.

Washington accuses the Qods force of funding, arming and training “rogue” elements of the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. It calls these elements “special groups”.

Tehran blames violence in Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces and denies any interference in Baghdad’s affairs.

The U.S. military said last week “very, very significant” amounts of Iranian arms had been found in the southern city of Basra and also Baghdad during an Iraqi government offensive against militiamen loyal to Sadr that began in late March.