Baghdad, Iraq ? A ranking Iranian diplomat Monday said the chaos of Iraq is spilling over into his country, spreading a destabilizing influence to its Arab population.

The assertion by Mohammad Reza Baghban, the Iranian consul in the southern city of Basra, runs counter to the Bush administration analysis that violence and instability flow the opposite direction – from Tehran to Baghdad.

“If you take a look at the discoveries of the Iranian police, you will find arms, ammunitions and other illegal equipment smuggled from Iraq to Khuzestan and other Iranian provinces,” Baghban said in a rare interview.

Khuzestan is an oil-rich ethnically Arab province in mostly Persian Iran that in the past few years has experienced outbreaks of violence by suspected separatists.

Allegations that arms flow from Iran into Iraq are unsubstantiated, despite a strong presence of British and U.S. troops in the border region of southern Iraq, Baghban added.

“The Americans are used to speaking nonsense, and none of their allegations are documented,” Baghban said. “Can they offer any evidence of what they say?”

Baghban said U.S. and British troops stationed at the Mehran and Shalamcheh border outposts have had ample opportunity to monitor the frontier between Iran and southern Iraq, which is dominated by Shiite militias and political parties with roots in Iran.

Iran and the U.S. have been locked in a decades-long cold war that has heated up recently over allegations of Iranian interference in Iraq as well as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. U.S. troops last month stormed an Iranian government office in the northern city of Irbil, arresting half a dozen officials on suspicion of aiding armed groups. Five remain in custody.

Baghban said he had no fear that U.S. or British troops would raid his consulate, which enjoys a higher degree of protection under international law. He added that his staff maintains relations with local British consulate officials.

Besides its embassy in Baghdad, Iran operates consulates in the predominantly Shiite cities of Basra and Karbala and two lesser-rank offices in Iraqi Kurdistan. All, except Baghdad, are areas with ethnic and historic links to predominantly Shiite Iran.

The diplomatic stations have granted tens of thousands of visas to Iraqis, even as Americans permit only tiny numbers of Iraqis to travel to the U.S., Baghban said. In Basra alone, 10,000 to 30,000 visas are issued a month, he said.

“They travel to Iran for different purposes like pilgrimage, visiting their relatives or for medical treatment,” Baghban said. “There also are Iranians coming to Iraq for pilgrimage, commerce or family visits and they might pass by Basra. But currently, they are not numerous.”