U.S. DoD audio/transcript: Strait of Hormuz Incident

http://mprofaca.cro.net/ BREAKING NEWS (January 10, 2008) http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=77540 DUBAI (AFP) - The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said on Thursday there was "no way to know" if a threat radioed to U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz came from Iranian speedboats, casting doubt on the earlier U.S. version of Sunday's confrontation. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011000692.html?nav=rss_nation In Tehran, Revolutionary Guards Brig. General Ali Fadavi charged that the United States was creating a "media fuss," the Fars News Agency reported. He said the Iranian navy's goal was to obtain registration numbers that had been unreadable. The incident has triggered tough words from the United States. President Bush has twice called the encounter a "provocation" and yesterday warned that Iran faced "serious consequences" if it happened again. Parts of the video record conversations in Persian between Iranians on the patrol boat. They appear to be discussing the clarification requested and a radio frequency change, according to two Persian-speakers contacted by The Washington Post. At one point, the Iranian officer appears to be checking a Global Positioning System device. "We don't know whether the Iranian version is edited, but from what we see, it appears to be a fairly normal exchange between Iranian naval patrol boats and U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian naval person asks the U.S. to identify itself, which it does," said Shaul Bakhash, an Iran expert at George Mason University whose wife was detained in Iran for more than eight months last year. "There is nothing on that tape to indicate a confrontation, the danger of hostilities and certainly no statement by the Iranian side as alleged by the U.S. side that the Iranians were coming at them," he said.

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YouTube | January 11, 2008

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