Ten US sailors – nine men and one woman – were briefly held by Iran after making a navigational mistake that led them into Iranian waters.
Advertisement
A video purporting to show a US Navy sailor apologizing to Iranian authorities for drifting into Iran’s waters on Tuesday has circulated on social media after it was broadcast by state-sponsored television Wednesday.
The Pentagon said there were no indications the sailors were harmed while in Iranian custody.
The vessels, which were purportedly travelling from Kuwait to Bahrain, were interdicted by the naval division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards near Farsi Island, the site of a major Iranian naval base.
The sailors left the island at 0843 GMT (3:43 a.m. EST) Wednesday aboard their boats, the Navy said. They were picked up by Navy aircraft and other sailors took control of their boats for the return voyage to Bahrain, where the United States 5th Fleet is based.
Iran said the British sailors were released when their government apologized to Iran, but London denied that it had offered any apology.
The Revolutionary Guard released images of the USA sailors before their release, showing them sitting on the floor of a room.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said resolution of the incident was a success for diplomacy, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was grateful to have the service members “back in our hands”.
Kerry spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at least five times by phone, USA and Iranian officials said. “We need to give these guys the opportunity to tell us what was really going on”. The engine problem did not cause the boats to go off course but apparently prevented them from evading the Iranians once the crews realized they were inside Iran’s territorial waters.
A senior State Department official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said Washington first got word of the incident about noon Tuesday.
Iran is expected to satisfy the terms of the nuclear deal in just days.
Iranian state TV has rerun a video clip of one of the held USA sailors apologizing for the intrusion into Iranian territorial waters.
The incident at sea wouldn’t delay implementation of the Iran nuclear deal, administration officials said.
“Obviously, I don’t like to see our people being detained by a foreign military”, Carter told a news conference later on Thursday at Tampa, Florida-based U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.
“Unintentional or not, this was a US naval incursion into Iran’s jurisdiction”, Drezner wrote in The Washington Post on Wednesday, “Fortunately, Iran did not respond to this incident in the same way that, oh, I don’t know, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally recently responded to an aerial incursion”, he added, referring to Turkey’s shoot down of a Russian fighter jet last month. “Around the world, the US Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved”, Carter said.
Iran made clear yesterday that they were taking the sailors’ word for it that the incident was unintentional, and the only reason they were kept overnight was because it happened too late on Tuesday for them to be returned that night.
The Guard’s 200,000-member force is different from the regular Iranian military and is charged with protecting the ruling system.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended President Obama’s decision not to discuss the short-lived crisis in his State of the Union address.
Advertisement
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the sailors’ temporary detention by Iran is “outrageous” and shows “how little they respect (Obama) and how weak this president truly is”.
