US Navy sailors released unharmed by Iran in less than a day
Defense chief: US sailors made navigational error in Iran
(about 17 hours later)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — It turned out to be the international crisis that wasn’t.
TAMPA, Florida — Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday it appears a navigational error caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, where they were detained overnight by Iran and released.
Less than a day after 10 U.S. Navy sailors were detained in Iran when their boats drifted into Iranian waters, they and their vessels were back safely Wednesday with the American fleet.
“It does appear — the information that they have given us and through their commanders — that they did stray accidentally into Iranian waters due to a navigation error,” Carter said in an interview in Miami with Fusion network. Later, he flew to Tampa to meet with leaders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tapped the personal relationship he has formed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the three years of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, speaking with him at least five times by telephone. Kerry credited the quick resolution to the “critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country secure and strong.”
“They obviously had misnavigated ... that’s how they believe they ended up in this circumstance,” he added. “They did not report this navigational error at the time. It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered Iranian boats. ... We don’t know that fully yet.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter thanked Kerry after the sailors’ release and couched the incident in humanitarian terms, noting that “the U.S. Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress.”
Less than a day after being detained on Iran’s Farsi Island in the Gulf, the 10 sailors were back with their American fleet. Navy officials said the 10 were undergoing what the military calls “reintegration,” a series of interviews and physical and mental health examinations to ease their return to duty. A Navy investigation will ensue.
For Tehran, the Americans’ swift release was a way to neutralize a potential new flashpoint days before it was expected to meet the terms of last summer’s nuclear deal, which will give Iran significant relief from painful economic sanctions.
The Navy has given no indication that the 10 were injured or mistreated.
It is likely that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, would have had to approve the release, given the immense political sensitivities.
A complete picture of what happened is unlikely to be available for days, but the central cause for the crews’ entering Iranian waters was the navigational slip, which apparently was caused by human error rather than by an equipment malfunction, defense officials said. The boats, known as riverine command boats, were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain.
But the rapid resolution also was a victory for moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who has promoted greater openness with the outside world despite strident opposition from deeply entrenched hard-liners at home.
The navigational error cited by Carter was compounded by some sort of engine trouble aboard one of the boats, another U.S. defense official said. 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.
“Rouhani’s policy of interaction is working,” said Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz. “Iran and the U.S. have gone a long way in reducing tensions but still have a long way to go in improving their contacts. It was a big step forward.”
The Navy realized the boats were missing when they failed to appear shipside in the Gulf for refueling on their way to Bahrain, one defense official said. GPS devices aboard the boats enabled the Navy to determine, after the fact, that they were in Iranian waters, but the Navy was not immediately sure whether the crew members were safe or had gone overboard. So a search-and-rescue operation was undertaken, and at least one U.S. ship crossed into Iranian waters to look for the crew after alerting the Iranian navy of their intentions. The Iranians did not interfere, the defense official said. The official was not authorized to discuss these details and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The nine men and one woman were detained Tuesday after at least one of their boats suffered mechanical problems off of Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s.
Secretary of State John Kerry used the personal relationship he has formed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to work out the crews’ release. Kerry credited the quick resolution to the “critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country secure and strong.”
The Americans’ small Riverine boats were sailing between Kuwait and Bahrain on a training mission when the U.S. lost contact.
Carter said the sailors were not on a covert mission and were simply making their way from Kuwait to Bahrain, both on the western coast of the Gulf. They ended up in Iranian territorial waters at least 50 miles offshore and were detained by the Iranian military at Farsi Island, which is home to an 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 the vessels for the return voyage to Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet is based.
Navy officials said the families of the 10 crew members were kept abreast of developments once it was confirmed that the Iranians were holding them.
Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a 5th Fleet spokesman, said the priority now would be determining “how exactly these sailors found themselves in Iran.”
He declined to say where they were going or give details on their identities, but a senior defense official said they were heading to a U.S. military facility in Qatar. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said they are being debriefed and getting medical exams but were not harmed.
In Washington, a defense official said the Navy has ruled out engine or propulsion failure as the reason the boats entered Iranian waters. Navigation problems, due either to human or mechanical failure, could not be ruled out, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss details of the incident and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
The sailors were part of Riverine Squadron 1, based in San Diego, U.S. officials said. When the U.S. lost contact with the boats, ships attached to the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier strike group began a search, as did aircraft from the Truman. The officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident publicly.
The Revolutionary Guard released images of the U.S. sailors before their release, showing them sitting on the floor of a room. They looked mostly bored or annoyed, although one appeared to be smiling. The woman had her hair covered by a brown cloth. The pictures also showed what appeared to be their two boats.
State TV later released more video and photos of the Americans apparently surrendering on their knees, their hands behind their head. It also showed machine guns and ammunition they had onboard.
“After determining that their entry into Iran’s territorial waters was not intentional, and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in international waters,” the Guard said.
US Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said the incident remained under investigation.
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking later to “CBS This Morning,” said the U.S. government had not issued an apology.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Biden said. “When you have a problem with the boat, you apologize the boat had a problem? No, and there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice.”
Iranian TV ran video of one of the sailors apologizing for the intrusion into Iranian waters.
“It was a mistake. That was our fault and we apologize for our mistake,” the unidentified sailor is shown saying in English.
The U.S. Central Command later said: “The video appears to be authentic, but we cannot speak to the conditions of the situation or what the crew was experiencing at the time.” It added that the crew was undergoing “the reintegration process and we will continue to investigate this incident.”
“What matters most right now, however, is that our sailors are back safely,” it added.
In his statement, Kerry expressed his “gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation in swiftly resolving this matter.”
Gen. Ali Fadavi, the Guard’s navy chief, accused the Americans of “unprofessional acts” for 40 minutes before the sailors were picked up by Iranian forces.
The quick resolution stood in contrast to the 2007 seizure by Iran of 15 British sailors and marines who were searching for a merchant ship in the Gulf. Iran held them for 13 days, with the captives saying they were kept in cold stone cells, blindfolded and fearing execution, and coerced into falsely saying they had entered Iranian waters.
Their detention by the Revolutionary Guard occurred under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A day after they were seized, the U.N. Security Council imposed more sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.
Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, called the Americans’ release “a big victory for Rouhani and his team.”
“Finally, he was able to assert himself vis a vis the Revolutionary Guard. ... He is trying to change Iran’s ‘in-your-face image’ that developed under Ahmadinejad,” Esfandiari said.
“They must have contacted the Supreme Leader and said ... ‘If we let this become an international incident, there is no way we can restore that sense of goodwill that we are trying to project,’” she added.
The Guard’s 200,000-member force is different from the regular Iranian military and is charged with protecting the ruling system. Its naval forces are heavily dependent on armed speedboats that can be used in teams to swarm much larger vessels.
Tuesday’s incident recalled the 2009 arrest of three American hikers by Iran as they traveled along the country’s border with Iraq. One hiker, Sarah Shourd, was released after more than 13 months in custody after mediation by Oman. Her travel companions, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, were convicted of espionage but set free a year after her.
The sailors’ detention came just hours before President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address and amid a period of renewed maritime tensions with Iran. Last month, Iran conducted a rocket test near U.S. warships and boats passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the route for about a fifth of the world’s oil.
Iran sank a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier near the strait in February 2015 and has said it is testing “suicide drones” that could attack ships. It also has challenged foreign cargo ships in the Gulf, opening fire on at least two last year. In one incident, Iran temporarily seized a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship over what it said was a commercial dispute before releasing it and its crew more than a week later.
Iran is expected to satisfy the terms of the nuclear deal in just days. Once the U.N. nuclear agency confirms Iran’s actions to roll back its program, the U.S. and other Western powers are obliged to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Kerry recently said the deal’s implementation was “days away.”
Four Americans of Iranian origin remain held by Iran, including journalist Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post; former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati of Flint, Michigan; pastor Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho; and Siamak Namazi, a businessman and the son of a politician from the shah’s era. Separately, former FBI agent Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA on an unapproved intelligence mission.
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This has been corrected to show the name of Iran’s foreign minister is spelled Mohammad Javad Zarif instead of Mohammed.
Burns reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.
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Dareini reported from Tehran, Iran. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor, Bradley Klapper, Robert Burns and Richard Lardner in Washington, Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.
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Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
