U.S. fabricated boat tape, Iranians say

TEHRAN — Iran on Wednesday accused the United States of fabricating video and audio released by the Pentagon that shows Iranian boats confronting U.S. warships near the Persian Gulf.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the “allegation is absurd, factually incorrect and reflects the lack of seriousness with which they take this serious incident.”

The video from Sunday’s incident shows small Iranian boats swarming around the U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

In the recording, a man speaking in heavily accented English threatens, “I am coming to you. . . . You will explode after . . . minutes.”

“The footage released by the U.S. Navy was compiled using file pictures, and the audio has been fabricated,” an official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying by the state-run English-language channel Press TV.

The report did not name the Revolutionary Guard official and did not offer evidence that the video was faked.

National security advisor Stephen Hadley warned Iran against more confrontations.

“This is a provocative act -- not a smart thing to do, and they are going to have to take responsibility for the consequences, if they do it again,” Hadley told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Bush flew from Washington to Israel.

He said his comments should not be seen as a threat.

Later in Jerusalem, Bush said, “There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple.”

In the 4-minute, 20-second video released Tuesday, the Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions.

The video was shot from the bridge of the U.S. destroyer Hopper.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said that its high-speed boats never threatened the U.S. vessels during the encounter, insisting that they asked them to identify themselves, then let them continue into the gulf.

Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar called Western news reports that the boats threatened to blow up the U.S. warships “mischief.”

He said the encounter was normal.