The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have released the ten detained USA sailors, according to Iranian media.
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After the 2007 capture, Adm. Mike Mullen, who was USA chief of naval operations at the time, said, “We’ve got procedures in place which are very much created to carry out the mission and protect the sailors who are there, and I would not expect any sailors to be able to be seized by the Iranian navy or the Iranian Republican Guard”.
The crew members were aboard two small patrol vessels in global waters in the Persian Gulf Tuesday when one of the boats developed a mechanical issue and drifted beyond the Iranian boundary.
The Revolutionary Guard later said that the boats had a broken navigational system during an unintentional incursion into Iranian waters, and that the USA had promised not to make similar mistakes.
The sailors were released after State Department intervention, though videos of Iranians commandeering the boats and later getting an apology from one of the sailors have since caused headaches for Washington. He then added, “We did not mean to go into Iranian territorial water”. “No”, Biden said in an interview with “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday.
The unidentified sailor said the Iranian behavior was “fantastic”, and he thanked them for their hospitality.
“That was our fault and I apologize for our mistake”, the sailor said in the video.
Iran reached a high-stakes nuclear agreement with the US and other powers a year ago, in which Iran agreed to dramatically limit its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions.
After first suggesting that a mechanical failure had disabled at least one of the boats, they acknowledged that there was no mechanical problem.
Carter said “we need to wait and see what the full context of that is” but said the USA would not have done the same in Iran’s position.
Iranian state television is reporting that all 10 USA sailors detained by Iran after entering its territorial waters have been released.
Commander Kevin Stephens, a 5th Fleet spokesman, said the priority now would be determining “how exactly these sailors found themselves in Iran”.
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Officials have been revealing more details about the incident since the 10 sailors were debriefed after their release Wednesday.
