US Sailors Released By Iran

USA sailors are shownn in an undisclosed location in Iran in this handout picture released on the official website of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps on January 13.

UPDATE: 5:03 a.m. EST – U.S. sailors, who were taken into custody after their boats entered Iranian waters Tuesday, have been released, Agence France-Presse reported Wednesday, citing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “They were released in global waters after they apologized”. Fadavi’s comments came after Revolutionary Guards spokesman Ramazan Sharif dismissed talks of their prompt release, saying that the American sailors were being interrogated.

The incident comes on the heels of an incident in late December when Iran launched a rocket test near US warships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

“There are no indications the sailors were harmed”, the Navy said in a statement.

“The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors’ presence in Iran”, the statement said.

They were detained on Tuesday after one of their two vessels broke down during a training mission, the U.S. says.

As per experts and news reports the Government of United States of America rendered an apology for infringing the territorial soverignity of Iran in response to which the Iranian Government promptly released the soldiers.

“When our Navy ships have problems, we don’t call Iran”, Gohmert blustered, “we call the rest of the Navy, we can call the Air Force, the Army, the Marines, the Coast Guard”.

Press TV, the Iranian state-run broadcaster, reported that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, had discussed the issue with John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and “adopted a strong and firm stance”.

The IRGC freed the US Navy sailors after it became clear that the American boats entered Iran’s territorial waters “unintentionally”.

Kerry had said on January 12, as he arrived at the Capitol to hear President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, that the sailors would be freed “very soon”.

“He has a close relationship with foreign minister Zarif and that would be a natural point of contact”, White House communications director Jen Psaki told CNN. “We don’t call Iran!” The deal gives Iran significant relief from painful economic sanctions.

Some conservatives in both countries, enemies since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, have criticised the deal that is due to be implemented in the coming days. Iranian officials then “realized they were there in distress and said they would release them, and released them – like ordinary nations would do”.

“Iran is testing the boundaries of this administration’s resolve”, Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio said.

Iran’s navy detained ten U.S. sailors on Tuesday.

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

In March 2007, Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen – eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines – in the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq, triggering a diplomatic crisis at a time of heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.