TEHRAN, 10 January 2008 — Iran accused the United States yesterday of “clumsily” fabricating footage claiming to show Iranian speedboats harassing US ships, as Washington issued a new warning to its archfoe on the first day of a Middle East visit by President George W. Bush. “The pictures that the Pentagon broadcast of the naval incident are file pictures and the voices have all been fabricated,” the Fars news agency quoted a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards as saying.

The Pentagon released a video and audiotape on Tuesday that it said confirmed US charges that Iranian speedboats swarmed around US warships in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and radioed a threat to blow them up. “The voices and pictures broadcast by the Pentagon about the latest incident have been fabricated so clumsily that the pictures and voices in the video are not even synchronized,” the Guards commander added. “That fact that it is a fake is clear to all.”

Before arriving in Israel, Iran’s archenemy, Bush lashed out at Tehran for what he described as a “provocative act” in the strategic waterway. “We viewed it as a provocative act. It is a dangerous situation and they should not have done it, pure and simple,” Bush declared on his first visit to the Jewish state since taking office in 2001.

The Pentagon dismissed as “absurd” Iran’s accusation that it had faked the video footage and warned that it was prepared to use force if its warships were threatened in international waters. “In the future we will follow very formal, deliberate procedures for dealing with threats like this as we did in the past,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters in Washington.

“We were fortunate that we did not have to escalate to the use of force, but as always we are prepared to if our vessels are threatened in international waters.”

The video, which the Pentagon said was taken from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, showed boats approaching the warships at high speeds and racing around the Hopper, the USS Port Royal and the USS Ingraham.

A man’s voice is heard in an audio recording speaking in English amid a sailor’s urgent warnings to stay clear of the ship. “I am coming to you... You will explode in a few minutes,” the voice is heard to say.