Brigadier-General Kevin J. Bergner, spokesman for the multi-national force in Iraq, speaks to the media next to a picture of Ali Mussa Daqduq, a captured senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative, at the heavily fortified Green Zone area in Baghdad July 2, 2007. [Photo: Reuters]

The U.S. military said on Monday that Iranian leaders and their Revolutionary Guards Quds Force were involved in stirring up violence in Iraq.

U.S. military spokesman, Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner told reporters that captured Shiite militant accused of killing five U. S. soldiers in Karbala in January admitted that senior Iranian leaders from the Quds Force helped and planned for the attack. 

"Senior leadership leading the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers," Bergner said in a news conference in Baghdad.

He said that Iran used Lebanese Shiite militia of Hezbollah as "proxy to do things they didn't want to have to do themselves in terms of interacting with special groups."

Bergner disclosed that a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was captured on March 20 in southern Iraq. Dakdouk was a liaison between the Iranians and special Shiite groups in Iraq, led by Qais al-Khazaali, a former spokesman of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

He said that Khazaali, who was captured in March, has told U.S. interrogators that they "could not have conducted it (the Karbala attack) without support from the Quds force."

The Iranians took groups of 20 to 60 extremists for training in three camps in Iran, Bergner said, adding that when the groups return to Iraq they formed units called "special groups" to carry out attacks and stir violence in the country.

Previously, the U.S. military frequently accused Iran of arming, financing and training Iraqi Shiite militia to carry out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces, along with fueling sectarian violence in the war-torn country.