Prankster May Have Sparked Persian Gulf Incident

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Iranian Boats Provoke 'Serious Incident' in Strait of Hormuz

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  Created by Dave Keating | add comment

The Pentagon has added itself to the growing number of critics doubting the authenticity of the tape it released last week purporting to show Iranian boats menacing US ships in the Persian Gulf.  The apparent radio threat to bomb U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf may not have come from the five Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats that approached them -- and may not even have been intended for the US. In fact, it has emerged that the transmission may have come from an infamous radio prankster.

The threat was made on radio channel 16, a common marine frequency used by ships and others in the region, and could have been broadcasted from and intended for anybody. The tape released by the Navy showed the boats sailing near the US ships and played the audio of a radio transmission in which a heavily accented voice said: "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes,” in English. The audio was recorded separately from the video but they were combined by the Pentagon to give a "better idea of what is happening."

But soon after the video was released several native Farsi speakers said the accent of the voice wasn’t Persian, and in fact a Persian speaker would likely be unable to make the sound of two consonants together in the world “explode.” A Farsi speaker, they said, would have pronounced it as “ex-puh-load.”

Now the US navy's journal, Navy Times, has claimed that the threats, which were broadcast last week by the Pentagon, are thought to have come from an infamous radio prankster called the ‘Filipino Monkey.’ The monkey, which may be a person or a group of person, has been making such threatening broadcasts to ships via deck-to-deck transmissions for 25 years.

The US navy said its gunners came within seconds of firing on the speedboats, who they say were swarming around them in a suspicious pattern. The United States has elevated the encounter into an international incident. Twice this week, President Bush criticized the ships’ behavior as provocative and warned of "serious consequences" if it happens again.