Story highlights The entire incident lasted about a minute with no shots being fired

The Navy took photos of the incident, but has not publicly released them

Washington (CNN) An Iranian warship briefly pointed weapons on its deck at a U.S. military helicopter and coalition warship two weeks ago in the Gulf of Aden, a Defense official told CNN on Wednesday.

The two ships were just a few hundred yards apart on July 25 when Iranian crewmembers pointed what are believed to be on-deck machine guns at the warship and the U.S. military helicopter that had just landed on that coalition ship's deck, the Defense official said.

However, the coalition warship and helicopter crew quickly noticed there was a cameraman standing right behind one of the Iranian gunners.

"Were they just trying to get cool pictures pointing at us? Were they making a propaganda film? Was some guy taking pictures to send to his girlfriend? We don't know," the Defense official said.

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