Are Iran's watermelons tainted? Or are its Persian Gulf rivals drumming up charges?

Last week, customers in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iran's archrival, Saudi Arabia, suspected fruit most foul after spotting holes that "appeared to be made with a drill" in shipments of watermelon coming from Iran, according to alarmed posts on Twitter.

A video soon surfaced of a man in a supermarket pointing out the holes in a neatly organized pile of watermelons.

"The holes appear to have been closed up with what seems like mud," he says as his smartphone camera pans across the watermelon stand.

Other concerned people posted pictures under the hashtag #Boycott_Iranian_Goods, warning fellow watermelon lovers that Iran was injecting poison, carcinogens or lethal viruses into their favorite fruit.

"I wish I knew when the ministers of commerce will realize Iran is the biggest enemy of the [Persian] Gulf countries," Twitter user Ali Shahri wrote. The nation "that exports arms and trouble to our countries, is it trustworthy for us to import our watermelons from it?"

Officials and politicians also took a slice of the action.

Kuwaiti lawmaker Hamdan Aazimi saw the purportedly tainted fruit as a response to Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida reported.

For Aazimi, Iran's revenge came in the form of foodstuffs "full of poisonous chemical materials."