Iranian Captors told American Sailors to ‘Act Happy’

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”. “It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered the Iranian boats and discovered they were inside of the territorial waters of Iran”, Carter said in the interview, which took place in Miami.

Iran moved Wednesday to head off a potential crisis days before the expected implementation of its nuclear deal with world powers by releasing 10 US Navy soldiers it had detained in the Gulf.

He said Tehran did not consider the U.S. Navy boats violating Iranian territorial waters as “innocent passage”.

Iranian state television has shown dramatic images of the moment when Revolution Guard forces captured 10 US sailors in the Persian Gulf.

Kerry negotiated the release in at least five phone calls with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister.

The Pentagon said there were no indications the sailors were harmed while in Iranian custody.

PressTV also quoted Admiral Ali Fadavi, the Navy chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who boasted of Iran’s efforts to keep American forces at bay during the incident.

Carter said “we need to wait and see what the full context of that is” but said the USA would not have done the same in Iran’s position.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter thanked Kerry after the sailors’ release and couched the incident in humanitarian terms, noting that “the US Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress”.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush claimed that Obama’s Iran policy was “humiliatingly weak”. “In fact, it is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved and efficiently resolved and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong”.

The U.S sailor was filmed saying, “It was a mistake that was our fault and we apologize for our mistake”.

The analyst, who served as deputy director of future operations at Navy headquarters in Bahrain, said the sailor is only authorized to given his name, rank, service number and date of birth.