WASHINGTON — The president of the country American generals say is sabotaging the mission to stabilize Iraq could visit Baghdad in the near future on a state visit.

“When a definite decision about the trip is made, the timing will be announced to the public,” the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said yesterday, according to the ISNA news service. Mr. Mottaki said Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq had extended the invitation to President Ahmadinejad on a visit to Tehran on August 8–9.

A visit from Mr. Ahmadinejad would have the immediate effect of scuttling any efforts to entice Iraq’s vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, and other moderate Sunni Iraqi leaders to join the new ruling coalition of Kurds and Shiites announced last week. Sunni political leaders routinely accuse Mr. Maliki and the majority Shiite parties in Iraq of being Iranian stooges.

Such a visit would also be a rebuke to American military leaders, who are waging a war on Iran’s terror network inside Iraq. Major General Rick Lynch, who commands southern Baghdad and the outlying towns, said yesterday that his men were tracking some 50 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard corps, who were training anti-government insurgents.

“We know they’re here and we target them as well,” he said, according to the Associated Press. Citing intelligence reports, the general added that the 50 Iranian members of the guard flit back and forth between Iraq and Iran. “The real difference now is we’ve got to spend as much time fighting the Shia extremists as Sunni extremists,” he said.

The White House is preparing to designate the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization, as The New York Sun first reported last month. Should Mr. Ahmadinejad travel to Iraq after such a designation, questions may be raised about whether American soldiers could apprehend him, as Mr. Ahmadinejad is a former military intelligence commander in the guard. In 2005 and 2006, the State Department granted the Iranian president a visa to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly, in accordance with U.N. rules and America’s agreement as the host nation for the organization.

In May, the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, began face-to-face talks with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, ostensibly to present evidence of Iran’s role in providing Sunni and Shiite terrorists with advanced roadside mines capable of piercing the armor of most American humvees. The two sides met again in July, but neither American nor Iranian diplomats have said much progress has been made in the discussions.

President Bush has placed considerable faith in Mr. Maliki, a former member of the Iraqi Dawa Party, which was loosely affiliated with the Shiite underground that launched attacks on French and American targets in Kuwait in the 1980s. In November, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley asked in a memo that was leaked to the press whether Mr. Maliki had the ability or inclination to hold a national ruling coalition together in Iraq.

Since the American military surge began this winter, Mr. Maliki’s record has been mixed. He managed to keep most of the Shiite political coalition in the government after ministers affiliated with the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr left in protest. He also has given American forces explicit permission to attack Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, such as Sadr City.

But Mr. Maliki also has promoted Iraqi generals who have pressured the army in Baghdad to target Sunni terrorists exclusively and he has, if anything, drawn closer to the Iranians as they have stepped up attacks on the American military.

Mr. Qomi yesterday bragged to the Iranian Mehr news agency that Iran and Iraq have signed 65 arrangements since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Those arrangements have included trade agreements, an open border agreement, and alleged accords concerning counterterrorism.