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. Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Guards, said an investigation established that “this trespassing was not hostile or for spying purposes”.
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The semi-official Iranian news agency, FARS, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s navy has detained 10 foreign forces, believed to be Americans, and said the sailors were trespassing in Iranian waters. He said “we just don’t know yet” whether it was a “combination of factors” that led to the riverine boats moving into Iranian waters.
But while critics were tweeting, Secretary of State John Kerry was busy working with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to get the Americans released. According to the Pentagon, the boats were en route from Kuwait to Bahrein, where the US Navy’s 5th Fleet has a base.
USA and Iranian officials scrambled to defuse the situation, which unfolded as the nuclear accord edged toward its final steps, with a top Iranian official saying the deal should be implemented by Sunday.
Nash, now a Fox News military analyst, said in a Thursday interview on Fox’s American Newsroom the footage of a sailor apologizing was a deliberate attempt to show us weakness.
After their release, the sailors departed the island at 2:43 a.m. Missouri time aboard the boats they were detained with.
The Navy so far has had little to say about the incident.
Both Iran and the U.S. said they had not been mistreated, but a video shown on Iranian television showed the sailors on the deck of their own boat with their hands over their heads in a pose that made it appear they were being taken prisoner. The US sailors were released soon afterwards, and Tehran demanded an apology for the incident from the US authorities.
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Secretary of State John Kerry said the quick resolution was indicative of the importance of diplomacy.
