In a stunning about face the US Navy has admitted that they have no idea where the voices in the tapes that they released a few days ago came from when they claimed that they had been threatened by Iranian speedboats.
The admission has cast doubt on the administration's claim that the Iranians had threatened US warships. The clash was supposed to have occurred over the weekend in the straights of Hormuz.
The Navy had released a video of what they claimed were Iranian small boats speeding around American ships and had coupled that with a separate recording of a voice, speaking in English, saying "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."
The juxtaposing of the two unrelated items, a video of boats and a audio recording of voices, which had been edited together, had given the impression that the two were related. It would now appear that this is not necessarily the case.
A spokesperson for the admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet said
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We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there. It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't.
The Pentagon has also admitted that the audio recording had none of the ambient noise of motor, wind or sea. This would appear cast further doubt on the claim that the boats were the source of the voice. There is also no evidence that the voices and the action on the video are in any war related in time to one another.
Iran has released its own video of the incident and claims that no confrontation occurred. The admission by the US Navy would appear to confirm the Iranian version of the incident.
