While Republicans dissed the Obama administration Tuesday for being weak and donned their Chuck Norris personas to mouth off cluelessly about being tough with Iran, Secretary of State John Kerry phoned up his counterpart in Tehran to discuss the capture by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of two Riverine Command boats and 10 USA sailors.
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The two Navy boats experienced mechanical problems and accidentally entered the country’s territorial waters, US officials said.
A State Department spokesman on Wednesday told reporter’s that Iran may have violated conditions of the Geneva Convention when it released video footage of detained U.S. Navy sailors.
But while critics were tweeting, Secretary of State John Kerry was busy working with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to get the Americans released. The report said Iran demanded an apology and that the sailors would remain in captivity as they were questioned about whether they entered Iran’s waters to gather intelligence.
Once U.S naval forces had them, the sailors were flown to a military facility in Qatar, debriefed, and given medical exams. “They reached the area due to a malfunction of their navigation systems, acknowledging that they did not know they were close to the Iranian territory of Farsi Island, acknowledging the matter as being inadvertent and unintentional due to a breakdown of their systems”.
USA and Iranian officials scrambled to defuse the situation, which unfolded as Iran prepares to finally implement a nuclear deal with world powers aimed at ending the Islamic republic’s long global isolation.
“It was a mistake, it was our fault, and we apologise for our mistake”, an unidentified sailor told an Iranian interviewer with the state-controlled TV station Tasmin. The Americans’ small Riverine boats were sailing between Kuwait and Bahrain on a training mission when the USA lost contact.
A US military official said: “Clearly this staged video exhibits a sailor making an apology in an unknown context as an effort to defuse a tense situation and protect his crew”. “We’re going to assess”, he said.
An Iranian news agency reported Tuesday that the sailors had been detained for “snooping”, but neither US or Iranian officials made any statements to support that claim.
Both men cited the sailors’ speedy release as a textbook example of diplomacy, with Kerry thanking “Iranian authorities for their cooperation”.
Iran on Wednesday released 10 U.S. sailors it had detained in the Gulf, moving within hours to head off a potential crisis as it prepares for the lifting of sanctions.
“This has unfortunately proven correct”, Royce said, noting despite the nuclear deal, Iran has only increased its aggressive behavior, including ballistic missile tests.
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“Ten American sailors have been taken into custody in Iran”, he said in a statement.
