Iran is becoming a military dictatorship, says Hillary Clinton

Speaking to Arab students at Carnegie Mellon's Doha campus yesterday, Mrs Clinton said Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps appeared to have gained so much power it is effectively supplanting the government.

"Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," she said. "That is our view."

Last week, the US Treasury department announced it was freezing the American assets of a Revolutionary Guard general and four subsidiaries of a previously penalised construction company he runs because of their alleged involvement in weapons of mass destruction.

The Revolutionary Guard has long been a pillar of Iran's regime as a force separate from the ordinary armed forces.

The guard now has a hand in every critical area, including missile development, oil resources, dam building, road construction, telecommunications and nuclear technology.

It also has absorbed the paramilitary Basij as a full-fledged part of its command structure – giving the militia greater funding and a stronger presence in Iran's internal politics.

The United States is focused on gaining international support for sanctions "that will be aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran," she said.

Meanwhile, the head of Iran's nuclear programme yesterday claimed that the country received a new proposal last week from the US, Russia and France, three of the countries trying to rein in Tehran's uranium enrichment plans.

A US official denied that a new proposal had been made by the three powers, saying their only offer remains a plan brokered by the UN's nuclear monitoring agency in October, which calls for Iran to ship most of its stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country.

Russia's foreign ministry also denied the existence of a fresh proposal, according to the Interfax news agency.