WASHINGTON — U.S.-Iranian diplomacy led to the release early Wednesday of 10 American sailors captured by Iran after they strayed into its territorial waters, a smooth resolution to a potentially fraught incident that the Obama administration attributed to communications channels established during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
“We can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said. He thanked Iranian authorities for their “cooperation and quick response,” and he said the sailors were treated well in the relatively short time they were held.
“These are situations which, as everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control,” Kerry said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington.
The peaceful solution to the potential crisis took much of the steam out of critics who had charged just a day earlier that the administration’s foreign policy weakness was responsible for what was seen as Iranian aggression.
With the sailors returned to the U.S. base in Qatar on Wednesday, critics pointed at Iranian videos showing them on their knees, with hands locked behind their heads, while the ship was searched by armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval forces.
The sailors, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said, “went through hell.”
Trump and others said that the only reason Iran cooperated so quickly was that “they get $100 billion during the next short period of time; they don’t want to jeopardize that.”
Some regional experts agreed. “The Iranians had about $100 billion reasons why they might not want to be holding those sailors right now,” said Dennis Ross, a former Obama adviser on the region. The reference is to the amount of currently frozen assets Iran is due to receive once international sanctions are lifted under the nuclear deal, expected to go into effect in a matter of days.
The lasting nature of U.S.-Iranian diplomacy would have been better tested if this week’s incident “had happened two weeks from now,” Ross said.
Implementation of the nuclear agreement was also clearly on the mind of the administration. Kerry, who exchanged at least five telephone calls Tuesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif while the sailors were being held, was concerned “first and foremost … with the safety and security of the people who were caught up in this incident, the American sailors.”
“But not just in the back of his mind … was the concern … that there would be the risk of escalation and the spillover of this issue into other issues, including, no doubt, the nuclear situation,” said a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on the incident under anonymity rules set by the department.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a frequent critic of President Barack Obama’s national security policy, charged that Iran’s boarding of the boats and detention of the sailors were violations of international law. He slammed U.S. officials for “falling all over themselves to offer praise for Iran’s graciousness in detaining our ships and service members.”
The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention authorizes coastal states to take “necessary steps” to prevent passage through their territorial waters that “is not innocent,” but “innocent” vessels are exempt from arrest and seizure and subject only to diplomatic complaint and orders to leave.
The United States and Iran, however, are among a minority of nations that have never ratified the convention.
The Defense Department was reluctant to release military details of the situation until the sailors were fully debriefed, officials said. After the release of the Iranian videos, U.S. defense officials confirmed that one of the 10 sailors — seen in the videos wearing a headscarf — is a woman, but they provided no other information.
Officials acknowledged having seen one video in which a sailor acknowledged the “mistake” of being in Iranian waters. “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,” said Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross, a spokesman at the Pentagon.
“The crew is currently undergoing the reintegration process, and we will continue to investigate this incident,” Ross said. “What matters most right now, however, is that our sailors are back safely.”
Military regulations stipulate that a captured service member is required to give only “name, rank, service number and date of birth,” and they say that captives will “evade answering further questions” to the utmost of their ability.
Through debriefing, the official said, “hopefully (the sailor) will be able to relay the story. … This guy may have been doing what he needed to do to release tensions.”
Officials also raised questions about videos and photos showing the sailors seated on rugs in a room in their stocking feet, eating and generally looking bored, along with pictures of Iranians rifling through the sailors’ passports.
According to a senior U.S. defense official, the Iranians could have pilfered personal information from the captives. It is common for U.S. troops to keep their dogtags, with identifying information including Social Security numbers, in the laces of their right boot.
Zarif echoed Kerry’s conciliatory remarks, saying that he was “happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors’ episode.” In a post on his Twitter account, Zarif said, “Let’s learn from this latest example.”
But the Revolutionary Guard, whose navy held the sailors, had its own complaints about U.S. behavior, indicating that diplomatic comity between the nations may not yet have extended to their military forces. “All vessels must give prior notice if they want to sail through another country’s waters, especially if they are military,” said Ali Fadavi, commander of the navy, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.
Defense officials said they were unclear on the condition of the U.S. boats, which left Iran with escorts under their own steam and rendezvoused with U.S. vessels outside Iran’s territorial waters.
