According to Pentagon officials, 10 US Navy sailors and two boats are in Iranian custody this evening after an incident in which mechanical problems caused them to draft into Iranian territorial waters. Iran has assured the US they will be returned safely and promptly. The boats were described by the Pentagon as “riverine patrol vessels.”
Details are still emerging, but the Associated Press is reporting that one of the American ships actually got so far into Iranian territorial waters that it ran aground on Farsi Island, which houses a large Iranian naval base. The sailors were said to be on a training mission.
A number of hawkish US politicians are riled up about the incident and faulting President Obama for not threatening Iran over the incident, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R – FL) accusing Iran of “testing the boundaries” with the US, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R – AR) claiming the boats were seized because of the nuclear deal with Iran.
At the same time, it’s hard to imagine what else Iran could’ve possibly done with the apparently disabled boats after one careened heedlessly onto an Iranian shore. All indications from Iran is that they are accepting the Pentagon explanation that this was an accident, and indeed it wouldn’t make much sense for the small ships to just smash into the island for any other reason. Indications are that the incident was too late Tuesday night local time to arrange an immediate return, and the sailors will head home Wednesday.
It being Iran though, and hawks being what they are, expect this to fuel another last-ditch effort to weasel out of the US sanction relief obliged under the P5+1 nuclear deal, something much of the US Congress has wanted to do at any rate.
“mechanical problems caused them to drift into Iranian territorial waters” LOL, Yeah right. That is a good one. Only infantile minded lunatics like Rubio and Cotton would make such comments as they do.
No wonder our establishment elites are pissed. Iran is forcefully dealing with their illegal immigration problem.
Sorry, “its” not “their”.
Just be glad it wasn’t the Turks whose territory we violated…
in order to release the boys, Iran wants the US to apologies, local news just stated.
Rubio and Cotton are two of Adelson’s lap-dog and seems to have
a knee jerk reaction when it comes to Iran.
Unless both boats simultaneously developed “mechanical problems” it’s hard to see why one of the boats went aground when the other could have towed the broken boat away from shore. But “mechanical problems” do provide plausible deniability for a covert op gone wrong.
Spot on. But, as covert ops go this is an interesting one. Don’t want to go all conspiracy whackadoodle on you, but who schedules a covert op to land on Farsi Island with its Iranian naval base, just before the President’s State of the Union address and just days before Obama’s legacy, the US-Iran Nuclear deal is to be “consummated”?
Someone in the Pentagon, CIA, or Mossad who doesn’t like Obama, that’s who.
The US Navy/Pentagon know about Farsi Island: who it belongs to and with great precision, where it is. Then too, the Pentagon, Centcom, Fifth Fleet Command in Bahrain, the riverine boats’ immediate commander, several different military satellites, and the CIA all know in real time and to an accuracy of a couple of meters precisely where those two boats were, and all of the above are in real time communication contact both manually and with automated telemetry. So any “navigational error” is nonsense. Meanwhile the “drifting accidentally” into Iranian waters? Not only that, but drifting all the way to shore,… what is that,… three miles?!!! Puleeeese!! Any mechanical problem, and the one boat throws the other a line and tows it home, after contacting headquarters and advising them of the problem.
This story just screams out “Total Bullshjt!!!”
Since all we have is this lame and insulting “cover” story, and the real “experts” haven’t even stopped laughing yet, may I invite all you aspiring conspiracy types to weigh in here.
Yo! Michel Kenney, can you tell us how Putin is behind this?