“After determining that their entry into Iran’s territorial waters was not intentional and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in worldwide waters of the Persian Gulf”, a statement posted online by the Guard said Wednesday.
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“It was determined that the detained American Marines did not enter Iranian waters intentionally”.
Asked by reporters if she was troubled by the sailors’ treatment by Iran, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she hadn’t seen videos of the incident.
The plot thickens around the 10 US soldiers who were detained overnight by the Iranian government after two Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters, a set of facts that both sides agree upon.
According to the statement, the Navy will investigate “the circumstances that led to” the sailors’ “presence in Iran”.
Iranian state-owned Press TV said the sailors had been released around 3 a.m. ET Wednesday.
The state-run IRNA new agency on Tuesday reported the sailors were “healthy and will be treated well”.
Iranian state television released footage of the arrest, showing the sailors as they knelt down with hands behind their heads and their two vessels being surrounded by several IRGC fast boats.
Officials said the sailors were part of Riverine Squadron 1 based in San Diego and were deployed to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
The Navy said the American crewmembers returned safely and there were no indications they had been harmed while in custody. “Nothing to apologise for”, John Kirby, spokesman for Secretary of State John Kerry, wrote on Twitter.
USA officials said that the incident happened near Farsi Island in the middle of the Gulf.
A senior defense official said no distress call was made by the ships.
He said the sailors were transferred to Farsi island, near where they had been seized.
The sailors’ detention came just hours before President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address and amid a period of renewed maritime tensions with Iran. Still images used in the report showed the sailors sitting calmly on Persian rugs.
The sailors – nine men and one women – said they expected to be released Wednesday morning. Iran held them for 13 days, with the captives saying they were kept in cold, stone cells, blindfolded and fearing execution, and coerced into falsely saying they had entered Iranian waters.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said the video “appears to be authentic but we can not speak for the conditions of the situation or what the crew was experiencing at the time”. “Absolutely ZERO truth to rumours that @JohnKerry apologised to Iran over Sailors”.
But the lifting of sanctions is due to begin with the pending implementation, and this incident could throw a wrench in the works. Other incidents include ballistic missile tests that the United Nations charged violated a Security Council resolution.
Republican lawmakers, including Arizona Sen. Tom Cotton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
But Earnest pushed back on the criticism of the deal.
One of the boats had engine failure and drifted into Iranian waters. The crew of the three boats, including eight British sailors and marines, were blindfolded and paraded on Iranian state TV and held captive for three days. Tehran claims the personnel were in Iranian territorial waters illegally when they were captured.
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The vice president said: “There’s nothing to apologize for”. They were released after two weeks.
