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Did radio prankster cause gulf incident?

The Navy doesn't know the source of the threatening call.

CAIRO - Sailors in the Persian Gulf have known him for years: a radio operator who taunts and insults passing ships. The rants are heard, logged, then mostly forgotten.

But now the phantom voice has taken center stage in the latest flurry of claims and counterclaims between Iran and the United States after a tense high seas confrontation - raising new questions about whether Washington could have gotten a key element of the story wrong.

The radio transmission - a staccato burst suggesting U.S. Navy ships were targeted for explosion - was a central part of an audio-video presentation that U.S. officials said showed Iranian speedboats swarming three Navy warships on Jan. 6 in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has called the U.S. recordings fabrications. Tehran's rebuttal received fresh attention after a privately owned newspaper that focuses on Navy issues, the Navy Times, reported Sunday that veteran U.S. sailors believe the threats could have been a well-known gulf gadfly who has been pestering ships since at least the 1980s. There is also the possibility that more than one broadcaster has contacted ships over the years.

Seagoing exchanges between U.S. and Iranian vessels are not uncommon in the crowded gulf shipping lanes. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said there had been two or three similar incidents over the past year, but "maybe not quite as dramatic" as the Jan. 6 confrontation.

Still, the Navy has said it cannot pinpoint the source of the radio transmission. Neither the location nor the nationality of the gulf radio prankster - or pranksters - has been determined.

Other evidence also has cast doubt on whether the threat came from the Iranian boats, including a lack of background noise - such as boat engines or wind - on the audiotape. Other analysts have noted the voice does not sound like an Iranian accent.

Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, said Monday that the Navy - while trying to determine the transmission's source - still believed the overall incident was highly provocative.

"The Iranian boats were coming close to the ships, making aggressive maneuvers, and objects were being dropped into the water," she said.

[Last modified January 15, 2008, 01:12:28]