Instead, Defense Secretary Ash Carter claimed today that the sailors made a “navigational error” and didn’t tell anybody about it until after they got caught in Iranian waters. Carter said during an interview with the Fusion America television channel near Miami that the sailors had “obviously had mis-navigated”.
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Shortly before noon Wednesday the sailors used their boats to head towards the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Anzio which was located in global waters just off Iranian territorial waters.
Carter says the sailors were not on a covert mission and were simply making their way from Kuwait to Bahrain, both on the western coast of the Gulf.
The 10 American sailors detained by the Iranian military were reportedly instructed to “act happy” while being videotaped in captivity, according to a defense official with knowledge of the sailors’ debriefing. The U.S. has expressed the warmest thanks to Iran for the swift release of 10 Navy sailors and their two boats.
Farsi Island is home to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base, which may be why the sailors were quickly detained, Matthew Kroenig, a senior fellow in The Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, told VOA Tuesday.
The US Navy said the American crew returned safely and there were no indications that they had been harmed while in custody.
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.
The crew was held for about 16 hours and U.S. Navy doctors have now examined them and found no evidence of mistreatment.
The sailors had been detained aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Gulf on Tuesday.
The video showed weapons and ammunition confiscated from the sailors, who were seen eating food provided by the Iranians.
“Most countries would do the same thing if foreign sailors came that close to a naval base”, Kroenig explained.
Carter also said it was “not abnormal” for the Iranian military to board the USA boats because they were in Iran’s waters.
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But he found himself at the center of an global uproar after Iran released footage showing an interrogator haranguing him about being in Iranian waters.
