The January 6 incident took place before President George W. Bush left on a Middle East tour, raising already high tensions between Washington and Tehran as the US government lodged a formal protest on Thursday.

The US Defense Department also disclosed Friday that Iranian speedboats interfered with the passage of US warships in Hormuz on two other occasions in December.

The department, meanwhile, released an unedited 36-minute videotape of the January 6 incident following Iranian charges that it had faked an earlier edited version that showed Iranian speedboats racing around US warships.

The 36-minute version aired Friday included the material contained in the earlier version, plus extended and largely uneventful footage of Iranian boats following the US ships at some distance.

It includes a shot of a dark object floating in the water, but it could not be determined whether this was one of the box-like objects that the Pentagon claims were dumped in the path of a US warship by two speedboats.

The videotape did not include a previously released audiotape of a threat to blow up the ships made in a radio transmission that the Pentagon says was received during the incident.

A voice on the audiotape is heard to say in accented English: "I am coming to you ... You will explode in a few minutes."

But Pentagon officials now say they do not know the source of the radio transmission, backing off a previous claim that it came from one of the boats.

Iran, which has described the encouter as routine and ordinary, has aired its own video showing an Iranian commander in a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose.

Amid the conflicting accounts, US Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a stern warning to Iran, saying American warships would defend themselves.

"We're not anxious to see a miscalculation here which could occur, and certainly not anxious to get into combat with them," Mullen told reporters on Friday.

"But as I said in my opening statement, please do not misread restraint for lack of resolve, and those ship COs (commanding officers) will defend themselves," he said.

A Pentagon official, meanwhile, said Iranian speedboats approached US warships transiting the Strait on two other occasions in December, including one in which a US warship fired warning shots.

The USS Whidbey Island, an amphibious warfare ship, fired the warning shots after a single Iranian speedboat approached it at a high speed on December 19, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

The second incident involved the USS Carr, a guided missile frigate, that "came in very close contact with three small boats" as it transited the Strait on its way into the Gulf, the official said.

The Iranian boats came within 500 meters (yards) of the Carr, which blew its ship whistles to warn them off, he said.

But officials insisted that the January 6 incident was the most serious yet.

"There have been other situations where certainly ships transiting the Straits of Hormuz have been approached," Mullen said. "To my knowledge, I've not seen one as both provocative and dramatic as this."

Mullen said the aggressive tactics have coincided with a transfer of responsibility for patrols in the Gulf to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from the regular Iranian navy.

"And to me, it is an execution of a strategy we believe they've had for some time," he said.

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