TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran on Sunday said the United States had "lost face" and should apologise over its portrayal of an incident between Iranian and US naval forces in the Strait of Hormuz.
Foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini accused the US of exaggerating the incident "to fool the region" during a visit by US President George W. Bush to Washington's Arab allies.
"The Americans have lost face again," he told reporters.
"They tried to bring it up at the same time as Bush was travelling to the region to paint Iran in a bad light. But their plans fell flat," he said.
The US accused Iranian forces of threatening to blow up three US warships in an encounter last week. Iran has denied the claims and has released a video it says proves the encounter was routine.
Some US naval officials have now cast doubt on the original claims that Iranian Revolutionary Guards threatened to blow the US ships up.
The Navy Times reported that the threatening comments, heard on a video released by the Pentagon, may have merely come from a local heckler known as the "Filipino Monkey", who listens in on ship-to-ship radio conversations and jumps in with inappropriate comments or insults.
"We advise them not to pursue the policies of fooling the people in the region. They should apologise to the region and the American people," added Hosseini.
The Pentagon had released footage that it said confirmed US charges that Iranian speedboats swarmed around US warships in the strategic waterway last Sunday and radioed a threat to blow them up.
Iran then released its own video, which it said supported its version of events that the encounter was merely a routine question of identifying the US warships.
The controversy first arose just ahead of Bush's visit to the region, which is seen as partly aimed at isolating Iran from fellow Muslim states in the region.
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