The British military has denied the consul’s charges. Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns dismissed allegations the Pentagon’s naval exercise in the Gulf this week was intended to provoke Iran.

Nicholas Burns: “We do have two carrier battle groups in the Gulf. They are not there to provoke any kind of conflict with Iran. We’ve had American naval forces in the Gulf since 1949, but the message is we have 170,000 troops in Iraq, we have obvious security interest throughout the Gulf region. The Gulf is not an Iranian lake. It is an international waterway. We will protect, as we have since the late 1940s, the right of companies and nations to use the Gulf for international commerce and for it to be a peaceful region and not a violent region.”