Iran on Wednesday denied a US newspaper report that it received intelligence damaging to the United States from Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi who has fallen out of favour with Washington.
"All of this is false," the Islamic republic's top national security official Hassan Rowhani told reporters. "We have no relations in regard to intelligence".
In Baghdad, an official in Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party, Mithal al-Alussi, also denied the report saying it was "fabricated" and part of "a campaign to marginalise our role because we have been demanding full sovereignty from the US-led coalition".
The New York Times said Wednesday that Chalabi had in April tipped off an Iranian intelligence official that Washington had broken Iran's secret communications code.
The alleged betrayal contributed to the US government's decision to break with Chalabi, the one-time darling of Washington's neo-conservatives and whose home in Baghdad was raided by Iraqi police and the US military last month.
According to US officials, Chalabi six weeks ago told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that Washington was reading the Iranian intelligence service's communications traffic.
US intelligence was tipped off to Chalabi's alleged betrayal when it read a cable the Baghdad station chief sent to his superiors in Iran detailing his conversation with Chalabi.
In the cable, the Iranian official said Chalabi had told him that a drunk American had told him the US had broken the Iranian code.
Rowhani laughed off the report.
"Iraq is our neighbour, and not overseas. We can go and get cables ourselves, not send a telex," he asserted.
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