U.N. inspectors investigating Iran’s nuclear program have angrily “complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran’s capabilities, calling parts of the document “outrageous and dishonest” and offering evidence to refute its central claims.”

Officials of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements.” The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

A copy of yesterday’s letter was provided to the WaPo. It was the “first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation.”

The agency noted five major errors in the committee’s 29-page report, which said Iran’s nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee’s assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that “incorrect,” noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

Rep. Hoekstra released the congressional report last month, saying his intent was “to help increase the American public’s understanding of Iran as a threat.”

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was “clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on.” He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report “took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire — and the Intelligence Community’s assessments as more certain — than they are.”

Off the record, several intell officials have said the “committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate.”

Hoekstra’s report was reviewed by John D. Negroponte’s office, which gives a good view of why it was skewed.

David Albright, a former nuclear inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said, “This is like prewar Iraq all over again. You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that’s cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.”

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