The sailors had been detained aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Gulf on Tuesday.
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It was reported that the sailors are going to a US military base, which is situated in worldwide waters, to be part of a reintegration program for American military personnel that has been detained, ABC reported. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations but US Secretary of State John Kerry called Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to discuss the incident.
The U.S. Navy has initial statements from the sailors but is now conducting a full debrief, so additional information may come to light, the official said. “It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered the Iranian boats and discovered they were inside of the territorial waters of Iran”, Carter said in the interview.
The sailors were later flown ashore by Navy aircraft, while other crews took charge of the boats and continued toward Bahrain.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter welcomed the sailors’ release.
Subscribe to Times of San Diego’s free daily email newsletter! . The sailors were later released.
Screen grabs from video broadcast by Iran’s state broadcaster purport to show 10 American sailors being detained by Iranian authorities in the Persian Gulf, Jan. 12, 2016.
“I can say unequivocally, the US government did not apologize to the government of Iran in any way during the course of this”, a senior State Department official said Wednesday. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a former U.S. Marine and veteran of the Iraq war, said it would be “naive” to think they didn’t.
“It is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved and efficiently resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong”. That was given as the reason that the United States need not apologize for the incident as demanded by Iran, since the crew could not be blamed for equipment failures.
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PressTV also quoted Admiral Ali Fadavi, the Navy chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who boasted of Iran’s efforts to keep American forces at bay during the incident.
