Hormuz incident caused by prankster?

A lot of people have accused the Bush administration of concocting a false casus belli out of an incident between Iranian speed boats and a naval destroyer earlier this week. The US Navy and the Iranian Navy released conflicting recordings of the events, and confusion has been rife. Now, it is being suggested that the international incident may have been caused by a well-known Persian Gulf prankster broadcasting on military channels.

A heckling radio ham known as the Filipino Monkey, who has spent years pestering ships in the Persian Gulf, is being blamed today for sparking a major diplomatic row after American warships almost attacked Iranian patrol boats.
The US navy came within seconds of firing at the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz on January 6 after hearing threats that the boats were attacking and were about to explode.

Senior navy officials have admitted that the source of the threats, picked up in international waters, was a mystery.

This falls under the heading of "truth is stranger than fiction" and shows what a knife edge we are walking in the Persian Gulf. Iranian and American diplomats need to work out a method to authenticate transmissions now, before we go to war over some idiot's version of "Is your refrigerator running?"