About 10 sailors were detained by Iranian authorities on Tuesday as they sailed from Kuwait to Bahrain aboard two small riverine patrol boats, a senior defense official tells NPR’s Tom Bowman.
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It was not immediately clear whether the US and Iran had made a specific arrangement to secure the sailors’ release.
“At 16:30 (1300 GMT) Tuesday, two American combat boats carrying 10 armed marines who had entered Iranian territory were seized by the combat units of the Guards naval force and moved to Farsi island”, the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement.
Secretary of State John Kerry has been on the phone with Iranian officials in Tehran attempting to gain the release.
A carefully worded statement did not explain how the sailors and their two riverine command boats ended up being detained by Iran, saying only that “the Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors’ presence in Iran”.
“We have been in contact with Iran and have received assurances that the crew and the vessels will be returned promptly”, Cook told the AP.
Meanwhile, Iran was expected to satisfy the terms of last summer’s nuclear deal in just days. He said Tehran did not consider the U.S. Navy boats violating Iranian territorial waters as “innocent passage”.
US officials also blamed mechanical trouble for the incident.
Farsi Island lies in the Gulf, roughly midway between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and houses a base of Iran’s Republican Guard Corps, which has its own naval units.
The incident came on the heels of an incident in late December when Iran launched a rocket test near US warships and boats passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the route for about a fifth of the world’s oil.
Republican lawmakers seized on the incident as further evidence that Iran is not to be trusted.
As part of the deal, Tehran will see the release of about $100 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for independent restriction and oversight of the nation’s nuclear program.
Some conservatives in both countries, enemies since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, have criticised the deal that is due to be implemented in the coming days.
In March 2007, Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen – eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines – in the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq, triggering a diplomatic crisis at a time of heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
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“The administration is rushing out officials to say there’s no hostile intent in Iran’s seizing our ships and holding our sailors incommunicado”, Cotton said.
