WASHINGTON – Senator Clinton has come under attack from Iraq’s leading candidate for prime minister for questioning his ties to the theocratic regime of Iran.

After a visit to Iraq last week, New York’s junior senator said there were “grounds both for concern and for … vigilance” regarding links between Dr. Ibrahim Jafari and Iran, where he spent a decade in exile.

Dr. Jafari, the head of the religious Islamic Dawa Party, was nominated for the post of prime minister by a coalition of Shiite parties that dominated Iraq’s January 30 elections. His selection fueled concerns that the new Iraqi government may come under the influence of the Islamic clerics who rule Iran.

But Dr. Jafari, a physician from Karbala who fled to Iran after Saddam Hussein had members of his party killed, rebuffed Mrs. Clinton’s comments as ill-informed.

“We are not at an American traffic light to be given a red or green signal. I am speaking on behalf of a collective decision. I will stop when the Iraqi people say to stop,” he said, according to an account of his comments published in the British newspaper the Times.

“Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration, and I don’t know why she said this. She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation,” the Times quoted Dr. Jafari as saying.

The Bush administration has not expressed concerns similar to Mrs. Clinton’s.

Mrs. Clinton led a congressional delegation to Iraq with a fellow member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona. Mrs. Clinton said the trip was intended to send a message of solidarity to Iraqis and inspire international support for reform in the country.

Despite her stated concerns about Dr. Jafari, Mrs. Clinton said she was “willing to look at the situation and, you know, not yet jump to any conclusions.”

“It is like any nascent democracy,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “There are going to be bumps along the road.”

The senator’s comments made headlines in Tehran, according to the Iran News Agency, and they drew scorn from the Middle Eastern television network Al-Jazeera, where she was called a “shill for Israel.”

In an opinion piece on the network’s Web site, commentator Sam Hamod called Mrs. Clinton a “clone” of President Bush, and stated that both she and Mr. McCain had “rushed” to Iraq “to do the bidding of [Prime Minister] Sharon and his Zionist friends in NYC and in the Senate.”

In the article titled “Hillary Clinton, the Next GW Bush: She Wants to Run Iraq,” Mr. Hamod vehemently attacked both senators, as well as Senators Schumer and Kerry and other lawmakers for endorsing the American invasion of Iraq.

Dr. Jafari has said Islam should be the official religion of Iraq, and that the nation’s laws should derive from the faith.

Mrs. Clinton said she had received assurances from members of the Shiite coalition who chose the prime minister that they understand the need to remain independent of Iran’s clerical rulers. She added that there were “checks and balances” in Iraqi law that would prevent such a scenario.

On potential Iranian influence over the new government, Mrs. Clinton said, “The future will demonstrate whether that concern is well-founded or not.”

Mr. McCain agreed that, “Iran is certainly a threat” but predicted that the Iraqi people will not allow Iran to influence their affairs.

Mrs. Clinton was traveling yesterday in India. Her office did not comment on Dr. Jafari’s remarks.