Also Wednesday, Iraq-based members of the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, denounced a decision by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council to expel them from the country by the end of the year.

In a statement released at the group's camp northeast of Baghdad, the group said the decision favored Iran's efforts to establish a "satellite theocratic dictatorship in Iraq."

Mujahedeen members should be out of Iraq by the end of the year and the group's offices in Iraq will be closed, the Governing Council said. A reporter who visited the group's Baghdad office on Wednesday found it occupied by squatters who said the militia had abandoned it.

The group has battled Iran's theocratic regime since the late 1970s. In 1999, it was listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

Over the years, the U.S. government had maintained an ambiguous posture toward the group, even allowing it and an associated organization, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, to maintain offices in Washington. In August, however, the State Department shut down both groups' offices, earning rare praise from Iran.