I was going to write something about how the Iran deal’s “Implementation Day” is fast approaching, but then this happened:
Iranian military forces seized two U.S. Navy boats Tuesday and are detaining them on Iran’s Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, senior U.S. officials told NBC News.
The 10 American sailors aboard the small riverine vessels were on a training mission around noon ET when one of the boats may have experienced mechanical failure and drifted into Iranian-claimed waters, officials said. Iran’s coast guard took them into custody.
The officials said it’s unclear whether the sailors — nine men and one woman — had strayed into Iranian territorial waters before they were captured.
Yikes. US-Iran naval confrontations in the Persian Gulf are not infrequent–really not infrequent, actually–but they don’t usually result in Iran taking US sailors into custody. But if those boats did drift into Iranian territorial waters (and admittedly we don’t really know that for sure at this point, nor do we know that “Iranian territorial waters” means the same thing to Iran as it does to everybody else), then it’s not entirely unreasonable that they were picked up and detained. Most countries, the US included would probably scoop up a couple of naval vessels belonging to an unfriendly country that happened to slip into their territorial waters and at least question the sailors on board. The good news is that it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be detained for very long:
The sailors, nine men and one woman, were being held overnight at an Iranian base on Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, and were expected to be transferred to a U.S. ship in the region on Wednesday morning local time. Officials said they believe the U.S. had spoken to one of the crew, and all 10 were fine and uninjured.
Some quick diplomacy between John Kerry and Mohammed Javad Zarif appears to have settled what could have been a very tense situation.
Obviously you’d rather not have something like this happen, but assuming the sailors and boats are returned to the US tomorrow morning (which, time zones and all, should be pretty soon), then I think you’d have to say that this particular situation worked itself out about as well as could have been hoped. I realize that imbeciles and war cheerleaders will bemoan the fact that we haven’t reduced Tehran to rubble over 10 US sailors spending a night under Iranian guard, but stuff like this happens from time to time, and it’s really good if you can avoid starting World War III every time it does. That’s why it pays to actually talk to other countries, even the ones we don’t like very much, instead of ignoring them on account of we’re mad at them.
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