The U.S. said Iran shouldn’t interfere with Afghanistan’s internal affairs following a report that an Iranian official gave an aide of President Hamid Karzai a bag filled with packets of euro bills, Bloomberg reported.

“We understand that Iran and Afghanistan are neighbors and will have a relationship,” Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement “But Iran should not interfere with the internal affairs of the Afghan government.”

The New York Times reported that in August, Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Feda Hussein Maliki, gave a plastic bag filled with euros to Karzai’s chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, on Karzai’s personal aircraft. The Times cited an Afghan official who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

The payment, part of a stream that totals millions of dollars, was intended to promote Iran’s interests and to counter U.S. and other western influence in Afghanistan, the Times said, citing unidentified Afghan and Western officials in Kabul.

“It’s not totally surprising at all,” said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations. “The U.S. would be naive to think Iran is not trying to exert itself in Afghanistan.”

Karzai and Daudzai declined to respond to written questions from the Times about their relationship with Iran, the newspaper said. The Iranian ambassador also declined to answer questions, and his spokesman said the allegations were western media gossip, the newspaper said.

“Iran has no love for the Taliban and the Taliban has no love for Iran,” Coleman said. “It’s not an ideological move between the groups, but a purely cynical move to support insurgent groups that tie down the United States.”

Read more in Bloomberg.