Agence France-Presse,
DUBAI: The US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said on Thursday there was “no way to know” if a threat radioed to US warships in the Strait of Hormuz came from Iranian speedboats, casting doubt on the earlier US version of Sunday's confrontation.
“There is no way to know where this (radioed threat) exactly came from. It could have come from the shore… or another vessel in the area,” Lieutenant John Gay told AFP by telephone.
But the spokesman stressed that “the Iranian fastboats were acting in a very provocative and aggressive manner” towards the US warships in the strategic waterway at the time.
The Pentagon released a video and audiotape on Tuesday that it said confirmed US charges that Iranian speedboats swarmed around the US ships on Sunday and also radioed a threat to blow them up.
But on Thursday Iran released its own video to counter the charges, showing the crew of a speedboat politely contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose.
State-run Press-TV in Iran said the footage had been released by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological force involved in the incident.
Gay said the threat was made through an “open bridge to bridge circuit” and it would be “very difficult to determine” that it came from the Iranian speedboats.
But “when you put that (threat) in the context of the Iranian behaviour, it created an uncomfortable situation for the sailors out there,” he said.
The purported confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil supplies pass, has further inflamed tensions between Iran and the United States which are locked in a standoff over Tehran's controversial nuclear drive.
US President George W. Bush, currently on a Middle East tour that will also take him to American allies in the Gulf, threatened Iran on Wednesday with “serious consequences” if it attacked US warships.
Speaking in Israel at the start of the tour partly aimed at rallying support against Iran, Bush said “all options” were on the table to protect US assets after Sunday's face-off.
