NICOSIA, Cyprus--Iranian officials said yesterday that the U.S. envoys who visited Tehran last year claimed that 36 Soviet divisions were massed near the Caspian Sea, ready to sweep south across the border into Iran.

Parliament speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani declared in his weekly prayer sermon at Tehran University that the purpose of the statements by the U.S. envoys was to get Iran into a war with the Soviet Union and divert its forces from the war with Iraq.

Reports of his speech were carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency and Tehran radio and monitored in Nicosia. Iranian television showed him holding an automatic rifle, which has become his custom in Friday prayers.

Rafsanjani said the American officials, whom he did not name, showed the Iranians "a satellite photograph" marked with lines near the Caspian showing areas where the Americans said Soviet forces planned to enter Iran.

Former national security adviser Robert McFarlane and other U.S. officials made secret trips to Iran last year to arrange arms sales, negotiate for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon and explore the possibility of renewed relations.

According to Rafsanjani, the Americans "meant to say that the Soviets intended to wage a war against us."

He said the warning was intended to undermine Soviet-Iranian relations, "involve us in a war with our northern neighbor" and divert Iranian troops from the battlefront with Iraq. Iran has been at war with Iraq since 1980.

Iran has promised in the past to help free American hostages held by pro-Iranian Shiite Moslem groups in Lebanon if the United States released Iranian assets it froze in 1979. Eight of the 26 foreigners missing in Lebanon are Americans.

According to White House memos printed in the Tower Commission report on the Iran-Contra arms deal, one purpose of an American visit to the Iranian capital of Tehran last May 25-28 was to deliver an intelligence briefing on Soviet military deployments near Iran.

One National Security Council memo presented a summary of a May 26 meeting at the Independence Hotel in Tehran where NSC staff member Howard Teicher "summarized the Soviet military posture and threat around Iran."

In memos about preparations for the meeting, the CIA noted that Robert Gates, deputy CIA director, "asked that briefing materials on the Soviet threat be prepared for McFarlane's use" and "Bob Gates has assembled a nice amount of intelligence on the Soviet threat."