2008 U . S . – Iranian naval dispute The 2007 - 2008 US - Iranian naval dispute refers to a series of naval stand - offs between Iranian speedboats and U . S . Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz in December 2007 and January 2008 . Incident . On 6 January 2008 , five Iranian patrol boats crewed by the Revolutionary Guard approached three U . S . Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz : the cruiser USS " Port Royal " , the destroyer USS " Hopper " and the frigate USS " Ingraham " . In a compilation of video and audio released by the Pentagon of the most provocative moments of the encounter , the radio officer of the USS " Hopper " is seen and heard attempting to make radio contact with the Iranian vessels . A few moments later , another voice radioed the USS " Hopper " saying , " I am coming at you . You will explode [ in or after ] [ " static " ] minutes . " Early U . S . reports indicated that because the Iranian boats continued to circle the U . S . warships and had been seen to drop several packages into the water , the U . S . ships had no choice but to take the threats seriously and maintain a defensive posture . Pentagon officials said the American ships were about to open fire when the Iranian boats withdrew . The commander of the destroyer USS Hopper publicly denied that the American ships were about to open fire . U . S . officials said the Iranians " harassed and provoked " their naval vessels , coming within of one warship . Iranian officials responded by calling the incident a routine contact of a sort that happens all the time in the crowded waters of the Persian Gulf . In response , on 8 January 2008 the Department of Defense released an abridged four - minute video segment of the audio and video recordings of the incident that included the radio threat . An Iranian Revolutionary Guard source stated , " The footage released by the US Navy are file pictures and the audio has been fabricated " On 10 January 2008 , Iran accused the U . S . of creating a " media fuss " . The Iranian PressTV then released its own abridged video of the incident , where no threats can be heard . The U . S . later released a 36 minute video of the incident . There has been confusion as to the source of the threatening radio transmissions . Persian - speakers and Iranians have told The Washington Post that the accent in the American recording does not sound Iranian . The New York Times pointed out that the U . S . - released audio includes no ambient noise of the kind that might be expected if the broadcast had come from on one of the speedboats . The Navy Times wrote that the incident could have been caused by a locally famous heckler known as the " Filipino Monkey " , noting that the threatening voice sounds different from that of the Iranian officer . Several media outlets reported that the Navy spliced the audio recording of the alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident . The Pentagon spokesman who described the Iranian boats as “ highly maneuverable patrol craft ” that were “ visibly armed ” did not note that such boats usually only carry a two - or three - man crew and that they are normally armed only with machine guns . The only boat that was close enough to be visible to the U . S . ships was unarmed , as an enlarged photo of the boat from the navy video shows . On 12 January 2008 , it was revealed that , contrary to previous reports , the packages the Iranian boats had dropped into the water posed no threat to the U . S . vessels . The leading U . S . vessels observed that they were harmless light floating objects and did not report them to following U . S . vessels as a danger . Lieutenant John Gay of the fifth Fleet later said , " There is no way to know where this ( radioed threat ) exactly came from . It could have come from the shore . . . or another vessel in the area " On 12 January 2008 , two earlier incidents during December 2007 were revealed by U . S . Navy officials , one in which the USS " Whidbey Island " fired warning shot s in response to a small Iranian boat which was approaching it on 19 December . The Iranian boat reportedly then retreated after the shots were fired . In a 8 July speech to the Revolutionary Guards , Ali Shirazi , a mid - level clerical aide to Iran ' s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , " The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran . If they commit such a stupidity , Tel Aviv and U . S . shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran ' s first targets and they will be burned , " according to the student news agency ISNA . Historical context . The presence of U . S . warships in the Strait has been a sensitive issue for Iran since 3 July 1988 , when the U . S . Navy cruiser shot down an Iranian commercial flight in Iranian airspace over the Strait , killing 290 civilians , an incident for which the U . S . never apologized , though it did provide monetary compensation . Territorial context . To travel through the Strait of Hormuz , which at its narrowest is wide , ships pass through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman under the " transit passage " provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . Neither Iran or the U . S . have ratified the convention , but the U . S . accepts the traditional navigation rules as reflected in the Convention . Iran has stated that it reserves " the right to require prior authorization for warships to exercise the right of innocent passage through its territorial sea . " It is unclear if the incident happened in the territorial waters of Iran or Oman .