US embassy cables reveal claims that intelligence agents and weapons were smuggled into Lebanon and Iraq

Iran abused the strict neutrality of the Iranian Red Crescent (IRC) society to smuggle intelligence agents and weapons into other countries, including Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel, according to claims in a leaked US embassy cable.

The society, which is supposed to be independent of government, is alleged to have provided cover for members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG), the most powerful military force in Iran, to infiltrate a number of countries, including Iraq and Lebanon, according to a well-placed Iranian source who spoke to US diplomats.

The Iranian Red Crescent has strongly denied the allegations.

The claim of involvement by Iran will infuriate Israel, which has long claimed the Palestinian Red Crescent has helped to move Palestinian fighters around. Israel views Iran as a much more serious threat than the Palestinians.

Disclosure of the allegations comes amid a standoff between western powers and Iran over its nuclear programme. Tehran denies western allegations that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Iranian influence has spread since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq removed two enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

The Iranian source, who had knowledge of the Red Crescent's overseas operations, said the Iranian intelligence service breached the society's rules of neutrality to send members into Lebanon to support the Shia militia force, Hezbollah militia during the Israel-Lebanon war. Among those allegedly sent in were members of the IRG's elite al-Quds force, a covert group of intelligence officers and special forces chosen to export the Iranian revolution.

The source said: "The only true Iranian Red Crescent officers dispatched to Lebanon were the doctors and drivers. Shipments of medical supplies served also to facilitate weapons shipments."

The source said IRC staff in Iran had seen missiles on a plane destined for Lebanon while delivering medical supplies to the airport. The plane was already half full of weapons before the medical supplies arrived. American diplomats regard the source as credible.

The cables say the IRC management was infused with hardliners after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, and that purged former staffers "now considered the IRC an agent of the IRG".

The IRC is one of 186 groups in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, whose pledge of neutrality allows it access to war zones and prisons usually denied to others.

An IRC spokesman said: "The IRCS wishes to strongly deny all the allegations. All IRCS national and international partners are fully aware and confident about the pure humanitarian nature and objectives of IRCS activities."

Iran is one of the main supporters of Hezbollah, which inflicted a rare defeat on Israel after it invaded southern Lebanon in 2006. As well as providing personnel and weapons, the source claimed that an IRC-run hospital in southern Lebanon was transferred to Hezbollah.

He said Iran used the IRC to enter Iraq during the 1980-86 war between the two countries, to get into the Balkans in the 1990s and to support Shia opposition in Bahrain and Yemen from 1997-2000. According to the cable, he said he was asked to sign certificates for two or three al-Quds officers to travel to Iraq under cover of the IRC after the US invasion. He was then asked to sign between 10 and 30 certificates. He said he refused and they were signed by a superior.

The source went to Iraq after the invasion, with another IRC employee who maintained ties with the al-Quds force, an Iranian-trained Iraqi militia force and the Shia militia group of Moqtada al-Sadr.

The source met lots of purported members of the IRC working in Iraq and knew none of them. He assumed their certificates had been signed by someone else.