Navy probe: U.S. sailors were ill-prepared for Iran encounter
WASHINGTON — The 10 U.S. sailors captured and humiliated by Iran after mistakenly steering their boats into Iranian waters in January were beset not just by poor judgment and faulty equipment. They also showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about potential dangers in one of the world’s more dangerous waterways, according to an in-depth Navy investigation.
In deviating from their planned Persian Gulf route from Kuwait to Bahrain — without asking approval or notifying superiors — they passed an island to their east and wondered whether it might be Saudi territory, rocks or oil platforms. The crews of both boats consulted their navigation systems, which depicted the mass as a small purple dot.
Despite being unsure of their surroundings, the sailors did not adjust their on-board navigation displays to enlarge the purple dot; if they had, they would have seen that it was labeled Farsi Island, a well-known base for the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.
“No crewmembers on either (boat) utilized a paper navigational chart in order to plot their exact location or to identify the island they had seen, even though the charts were available” on their boats, known as Riverine Command Boats, the investigation report said. No crewmember even bothered to log the fact they had seen the island.
“Crewmembers lacked navigational awareness, proper communication with higher authority, and appreciation of the threat environment throughout the transit,” the report said.
A short time after coming within view of Farsi Island, one of the boats suffered an engine problem. Both boats cut their engines while the crew troubleshot the problem, even though standard procedure was to maneuver to a safe location using the unaffected engine. Neither boat captain ordered his gunners to stand lookout or to man their weapons for purposes of self- defense.
An estimated five to 15 minutes later, two armed Iranian boats approached from Farsi Island, about 1.6 miles away. The coxswain, or driver, of one of the Navy boats later told investigators he thought they were seeing “just people on the boats, nothing in my mind said they were Iranian or anyone like that or military, just normal boats.”
The Iranians boarded the U.S. boats, confronted the sailors at gunpoint and took them to Farsi Island, where they were fed, interrogated and kept overnight before being released after Washington intervened. The incident caused uproar in the United States, coming on the day of President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address. Republicans criticized the administration’s response, which included thanking Iran for releasing the sailors.