Row at sea: US-Iran ties in fresh choppy waters

Washington says Iranian boats aggressively approached three US Naval ships in the waterway, a major Oil shipping route off Iran’s coast, and threatened that the ships would explode.

“This was a very provocative act by the Iranians and... came very close to resulting in an altercation between our forces and their forces,” said Stephen Hadley, President George W Bush’s National Security Advisor.

“They’ve got to be very careful about this because if it happens again they are going to bear the consequences,” Hadley told reporters, travelling with Bush on his first official visit to Israel.

“...It’s the kind of incident that can provoke exchange of fire and we think the Iranians need to be on notice that they are fishing in troubled waters here,” Hadley said.

The US released a video of the weekend incident, including a recording of what it said was the exchange between the two sides. Iran rejected the footage as fake and accused Washington of trying to stir up tension in the region.

“Iranian craft always ask other ships to identify themselves and this is what they did to the American ships. American ships answered and that was it.”

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

Iran’s Parliament Speaker, commenting on Tuesday, described the US account of the incident as “propaganda”. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has also dismissed the US report, saying it was a routine contact in the vital oil shipping route.

Bush called the incident “provocative” before leaving Washington on a West Asia trip aimed at nurturing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and rallying Arab opposition to Iran and its growing regional influence.

The encounter was the latest sign of tension between Washington and Tehran, at odds over Iran’s nuclear programme and who is to blame for the violence in Iraq.