Middle East

U.S. Navy fires commander of sailors who were held by Iran

This IRIB image grab of footage shot on January 12, 2016 shows American sailors captured in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. Navy said on Thursday that it had fired the commander of the 10 American sailors who wandered into Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf in January and were briefly held by Iran in an incident that risked becoming an international crisis.

The Navy said in a statement that it had lost confidence in Commander Eric Rasch, who was the executive officer of the coastal riverine squadron that included the 10 sailors.

Rasch became the first person to be publicly singled out after a preliminary investigation into the incident that occurred near Farsi Island in the Gulf.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the commander of Navy forces in the Middle East had also taken non-judicial action against other sailors involved in the incident but declined to provide details.

The Navy has not yet released the results of its investigation, but in February the military said the Americans had been intercepted on January 12 after the diesel engine in one of their boats developed a mechanical problem.

Two SIM cards were also pulled from the sailors’ satellite phones.

Some 15 hours later the Americans were freed after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry intervened with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, averting a diplomatic crisis days before implementation of the Iran nuclear deal and the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran.

The capture of American sailors by the IRGC ruffled feathers in Washington, with some senior Republicans slamming the US administration after President Barack Obama did not mention the incident in his annual state of the union address to the US Congress back in January.

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