Iran says the United States “is calling the kettle black” by saying it leads the world in terror and that the American government is trying to cover up its guilt of sponsoring and conducting terrorist operations around the world.

"Under such circumstances that instances of the U.S. behavior show this country has been the biggest sponsor of terrorism during the last three decades, Washington projects the blame and levels void accusations against other countries in a bid to conceal its acts in this regard," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said Monday.

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on terrorism last week blamed Iran for sponsoring terror. “Not so,” according to Mehman-Parast. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has always made special efforts to cooperate with the international community in fighting terrorism,” the spokesman said in a statement published by the semi-official Fars News Agency.

“To give [an] example of such the double-standard, we can refer to full-scale activities of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in the Western states and their connections with political figures and their secret services in those countries,” he told another government agency.

The MKO is a religious leftist organization that advocates the overthrow of the Iranian regime but also has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. An American court last month ordered the government to reconsider the blacklisting.

Mehman-Parast said the United States sponsors the Sunni Muslim Jundollah terrorist group that has carried out attacks on Iranian officials. Iran has maintained that the group’s leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, confessed after his arrest in February that the United States funded Jundollah.

The Iranian official also alleged that the U.S. Army forces in Afghanistan have allowed increased cultivation of poppies, used to make heroin that is a fundraising vehicle for terrorists. American activities in Israel were not spared in Iran’s accusations. Mehman-Parast said the “crimes and atrocities of Zionists” indicate the role of the United States in promoting terror.