Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi police backed by American soldiers raided the home and offices Thursday of Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi politician once groomed by the Pentagon as a possible replacement for Saddam Hussein.

The operation confirmed a growing rift between the United States and the former exile just six weeks before the return of Iraqi sovereignty. Two members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a key member, said they were considering resigning in protest of the raid.

“We are friends of America,” Chalabi told a news conference several hours after he said police woke him up and entered his bedroom with pistols. “But when America treats its friends in this way, then they are in big trouble.”

Iraqi authorities made several arrests and seized documents and computers.

U.S. officials deferred questions about the raid to the Iraqis but said neither Chalabi nor his political organization, the Iraqi National Congress, were targets. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said “clearly there were legal and investigative reasons, not political.”

Although the U.S. military arranged for Chalabi’s dramatic return to Iraq last year, American officials have recently complained privately that Chalabi was interfering with an inquiry into money skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, criticizing American plans for a transfer of power and cozying up to Iranian hard-liners.

The Pentagon recently ended a program in which it funneled millions of dollars over the years to Chalabi’s political organization. The $340,000 monthly payments were partly for intelligence passed along by fellow exiles about Saddam’s purported weapons of mass destruction — the Bush administration’s stated rationale for the war.

Chalabi has come under criticism because large stockpiles of these weapons were never found. The CIA long has been suspicious of information provided by his organization.

“I certainly was not aware there was going to be a raid on a home, if in fact there was,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. “My understanding is that the Iraqis are involved in this, and you’d best ask them.”

U.S soldiers stand guard outside the residence of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi police raided and searched Chalabi's residence Thursday.