You have probably seen or heard about the video recently released by the Pentagon: Iranian motorboats are sailing near U.S. warships while a voice threatens that the U.S. ships will soon explode. The U.S. media hyped now-discredited reports that a “battle at sea” nearly took place.

But now, the Pentagon has admitted that the audio in the video might not have come from the Iranian ships and might not have been directed against the U.S. warships. In fact, there is much evidence that the radio transmission did not come from the boats shown in the Pentagon’s video. There is none of the background noise of motor, waves and wind that one would expect from a motorboat. This particular radio channel is notorious for being cluttered with users hurling insults, and it is not at all clear that the threatening voice in the Pentagon’s videotape is even Iranian.

Presumably, all the information that we have now about this incident was available to the Pentagon - if they were interested - when they released the tape. We need to ask Congress to investigate: Why the rush to escalate tensions and release this video without checking?

This link makes it easy to write a letter to your Senators and Representative:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/iranvideo.html