US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday he was not aware that a note from the Iranians seeking access to the US evidence in the case of conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington had been formally received, dpa reported.
"We have already engaged with the Iranians on this matter. It was not a positive response," Toner said. "So we'll wait and see until we can see the note."
Iran said earlier on Monday that it has asked the United States to provide information about the two people indicted for conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi Arabia's envoy to the United States, in a plot that the US has linked to Tehran's Republican Guard.
Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said Iran would investigate the allegations. At the same time, he accused the US of using propoganda methods similar to those employed by Nazi Germany.
"These charges are like propaganda methods used during the Hitler era, when they said, 'Make the lie big and loud and repeat it over and over again, so that even you yourself would eventually believe it,'" Salehi was quoted as saying by the website of the state television network IRIB.
Iran has denied being involved in the alleged assassination plot.
US prosecutors last week filed charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism against Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized US citizen who also holds an Iranian passport and was arrested in September, and Gholam Shakuri, identified as an Iran-based member of the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Shakuri was still at large.
Salehi warned Saudi Arabia to not follow up on its plan to bring the case to the United Nations Security Council, warning that the US charges were "aimed at creating political differences in the region."
The Iranian Foreign Ministry for the second time in a week summoned the Swiss charge d'affaires, whose country represents US interests in Tehran since the two countries severed ties more than three decades ago.
The ministry reiterated that Arbabsiar was in no way linked to Iran's security services. US justice officials accuse him of trying to hire a Mexico-based drug cartel to carry out the assassination.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry demanded that the US extradite Arbabsiar to Iran's interest section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.
A State Department spokeswoman said last week that US officials had made direct contact with Iran after the indictments were announced. She gave no specifics, but the Iranian delegation at United Nations headquarters in New York is Tehran's only formal diplomatic presence on US soil.
The Iranian UN mission on Thursday denied any such contacts with the United States over the alleged assassination plot.
US hasn't received Iran's request on Saudi ambassador plot evidence
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday he was not aware that a note from the Iranians seeking access to the US evidence in the case of conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington had been formally received, dpa reported.
