AGHDAD, Iraq, July 2 — With the chaos of the occupation and now the loosening of American control here, Iran has moved into its best position in decades to influence the political shape of Iraq, Western and Iraqi officials say.

Already, the Iranian government has quietly strengthened its presence in Iraq by providing financial backing to a range of popular Shiite Muslim groups and by flooding the country with intelligence agents, the officials say.

Movement across the 900-mile border is much freer than under the rule of Saddam Hussein, as evidenced by the droves of Iranian pilgrims flocking to the Shiite holy cities of southern Iraq and the daily smuggling of goods and people.

Most worrisome to American officials are Iran's close ties to powerful Shiite clerics like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who was born in Iran, and Moktada al-Sadr, who led a fierce rebellion against American forces for nearly three months this spring. American officials believe that Iran might have partly financed Mr. Sadr's movement.

Though Shiites are a majority in both nations, Iraqis are torn between religious and national loyalties. Just how much sway Iran will exert over a new Iraq is far from clear. But some warn that Iran, the world's dominant seat of Shiite Islam, could be the silent power broker as Iraq heads toward elections in January.

Iran's aim, Iraqi and Western officials say, is to shape an Iraq run by religious Shiite politicians who could serve as proxies of the clerics in both countries.

"They want a failure of America in Iraq, but they hope the country will be stable enough not to destabilize Iran," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad with extensive experience in the region. "The best thing for them would be a stabilized Iraq with a friendly Shia power in Baghdad created in opposition to the occupation forces."

With the toppling of Mr. Hussein's secular dictatorship, competition for the heart of Shiite Islam in the region has broken open. For American policy makers, one of the greatest fears has long been an Iraq ruled by Shiites vulnerable to Iranian influence. That was one reason the United States did not support a Shiite rebellion after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

The White House now hopes that secular-minded Shiites like Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, will govern a democratic Iraq that will in turn transform Iran, which President Bush included in the "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea.

Since the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Western diplomat said, the Iranians "have the feeling that they're surrounded by Americans or friends of the Americans."

Some experts say Iran's seizure in June of three small British Navy boats on the Shatt al Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran was in part a petty but prominent way for Iran to emphasize that its interests in the region would not be ignored.

Iran has expressed both hostility toward and guarded acceptance of the interim Iraqi government, reflecting the internal battles in Iran's own leadership. For years, the two major camps in the Iranian government — the reformers led by President Mohammad Khatami and the hard-liners who follow Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini — have pursued separate foreign policies.

But many Iraqis already suspect Iran of wielding enormous influence over the most prominent Shiite political parties here. A poll conducted in May for the Coalition Provisional Authority showed that the most popular political and religious leaders in Iraq were Shiites with strong Iranian ties.

"It seems clear that the Iranians are trying to butter both sides of the bread and all four crust edges," said Prof. Juan Cole, an expert on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan.

The Shiite parties contend that they remain independent of the Iranian government, but also point out that Iran was the only country willing to harbor them in exile during Mr. Hussein's rule, and so it is not surprising that their ties to Iran remain strong.

At the same time, Iranian meddling is not without its risks. As many as half a million Iraqis died in the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980's, and the wounds and hostilities linger. When ordinary Iraqis talk about bombings and assassinations here, they often blame Iranian agents after pointing the finger at the United States and Israel.

Partly because of those sentiments, Shiite parties once exiled in Iran under Mr. Hussein — most notably the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri — contend that they no longer have direct ties to their former host, despite a history of generous financial support from Iran's government.

Officials here and in Washington say otherwise.

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A senior American military official said in an e-mail message that the United States Army has observed "a large amount of U.S. currency being passed by Iran" to Sciri, which was founded in 1982 by an Iraqi ayatollah exiled in Iran. The money was exchanged for "the supposed purpose of paying salaries and maintenance of vehicles and facilities," the official said.

Humam Bakr Hamody, a senior Sciri official, played down the link. "Sciri is not related to the Iranian government and has different positions and opinions," he said.