An Iraqi displays an anti-U.S. poster

TEHRAN, April 25 (Islamonline.net & News Agencies) – Rebuffing statements by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that Washington would not tolerate an Iranian-styled Islamic government in post-Saddam Iraq, two leading Iranian scholars reiterated Friday, April 25, the Iraqi peoples' right to an Islamic government and accusing Washington of only seeking oil and the protection of Israel.

"The Americans are mistaken in staying there and trying to govern Iraq," Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, Tehran's Friday prayer leader, said in his sermon.

"We know that the Americans are looking for oil and Israel's interests," he charged, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The former judiciary chief, who also sits on Iran's two top political decision-making bodies, stressed that "every Iraqi has the right to determine what government he wants."

"The Iraqis have said categorically, they want no America and no Saddam," he recalled, exhorting the United Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) "to supervise elections so that every Iraqi can cast his or her vote."

"If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen," Rumsfeld said earlier.

Another prominent Iranian scholar, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, asserted that Iraqis had sent a clear signal that they wanted an Islamic government, and not Washington's brand of "liberal democracy."

"We have seen seven million people gathered at Karbala. This was a form of practical referendum, saying that they want an Islamic government and are against the foreign presence in their country," said the influential conservative scholar.

The U.S. has accused Iran of seeking to use Iraq's Shiite majority to push for an Islamic government and undermine Washington's plans to instill its brand of democracy.

"The United States considers the model of liberal democracy as the most superior form of government.

"But we have witnessed in the past few days what kind of atrocities this form of government has inflicted on the Iraqi people," Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi said.

He underlined that the conduct of U.S. forces in neighboring Iraq was of a ruthlessness nature "without comparison to any invading force in the course of history."

Ayatollah Mesbah accused the Anglo-American invading forces of deliberately cutting off water and electricity supplies.