Tehran and Washington have given sharply differing accounts of what transpired between their navies in the key waterway for world energy supplies, with an Iranian commander accusing the Pentagon of "clumsily" fabricating video footage claiming to show Iranian speedboats harassing US ships.
"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 audio tape 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 said.
"That fact that it is a fake is clear to all."
The Iranian accusation drew short shrift from the Pentagon which said it was "absurd and factually incorrect and reflects a lack of seriousness with which they take this serious incident."
