Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders

Elsewhere, Iranian authorities blamed U.S.-backed elements for a series of bomb attacks in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan that killed dozens of people from 2005 to 2007. Baluch militants have killed dozens of members of Iran's security forces, including 11 elite Revolutionary Guards in a car bomb attack last year in Zahedan, a town near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Last fall, a young Kurdish woman killed several officers and soldiers in a suicide attack along Iran's northwestern border.

Other groups can provide precious intelligence to the U.S. The decades-old Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, or KDPI, whose members have been the victims of scores of assassinations in Iraq and Europe, allegedly at the hands of Iranian intelligence operatives, has relations with Washington that stretch back decades.

"It's a very warm relationship," said Rostam Jahangiri, leader of the group's Irbil, Iraq, office. "We interact here and in Washington. . . . Sometimes it's once a month. Sometimes it's after three or four months."

The secretive Mujahedin Khalq, also regarded by the U.S. and EU as a terrorist organization, may have little support among Iranians, but its networks extend deep into Iranian territory, and it is credited with exposing Iran's nuclear program in 2002.

Other groups include Jundollah, which operates out of the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and Arab groups in Iran's southwest.

The leftist Komala Party of Iran hasn't staged any military operations inside Iran since 1992, but several hundred or so fighters continue to train at their base camp in Zergwe in the autonomous Kurdish northern region of Iraq.

Abdullah Mohtadi, a leader of one of two Komala factions, said he met with White House and State Department officials in 2005 and 2006 to discuss Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress in early 2006 for $75 million to promote democracy in Iran, of which $66 million was approved -- most of it for Persian-language broadcasting. But about $20 million was set aside for unidentified groups the State Department described as "nongovernmental organizations, businesses and universities," for Internet development and "cultural affairs." Congress set aside an additional $60 million for the effort in the current fiscal year.

U.S. officials did not respond to a request for comment on claims that PEJAK or other groups receive funding.