Despite
10 American sailors being in Iranian custody, President Barack Obama
stuck to his State of the Union script Tuesday night and made no mention
of the incident, instead touting his nuclear deal with Tehran.
"We
built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to
prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. And as we speak, Iran has rolled back its
nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has
avoided another war," Obama said, in his only mention of Iran in his
final State of the Union speech.
Just
hours earlier, he was alerted that the sailors were being held in Iran
after two small U.S. naval craft entered Iranian waters, according to
U.S. defense officials.
Arizona Sen.
John McCain, once Obama's GOP challenger for the presidency, blasted the
speech for not including any reference to the incident in the Persian
Gulf.
"Ten American sailors have been
taken into custody in Iran," he said in a statement. "But President
Obama completely omitted this latest example of Iran's provocative
behavior so as not to interfere with his delusional talking points about
his dangerous nuclear deal with Iran.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also slammed the omission.
"I
was very concerned that he's missing where the challenge of the world
is with security -- he sits and talks positively about Iran when they
just took 10 of our Navy sailors," he said after the speech.
Secretary
of State John Kerry told CNN's Dana Bash that he expected the sailors
to be released "very soon" but would not be more specific. He was
speaking at the Capitol ahead of the start of Obama's speech.
A
senior administration official said there is nothing to indicate this
was a hostile act on the part of any entity in Iran, adding that the
U.S. has received high-level assurances that the sailors would be
released promptly.
There has been voice
contact with the sailors captured in Iran, a senior U.S. official told
CNN. The sailors -- nine men and one women -- said they expected to be
released in the morning. The official said the plan is to meet the
sailors in international waters after dawn, but did not say whether the
two boats would be returned with the service members.
"Certainly,
everybody should be aware of the fact we have been in touch with the
Iranians and they have assured us that our sailors are safe and that
they'll be allowed to continue their journey promptly," White House
Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNN's Jake Tapper.
The U.S. is uncertain whether
the vessels, which were sailing near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf,
intentionally entered Iranian waters, and the senior defense official
said no distress call was made by the ships.
Another
senior defense official told CNN the boats were in the vicinity of
Farsi Island for refueling. It's not clear whether they were refueled,
raising the possibility they ran out.
The U.S. lost contact with the two ships, which were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain, a senior administration official told CNN.
Kerry
started immediately reaching out to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif once he was notified of the incident, according to a senior
administration official. When Kerry reached Zarif on the phone, he
explained that the boat had a mechanical problem and that the boat
accidentally strayed. Zarif assured Kerry the sailors were being treated
well and would be released.
But former
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican,
criticized Kerry for attending the State of the Union before the sailors
were released.
"The secretary of state
should not say, 'It's gonna be soon, real soon,'" Rogers said on CNN.
"We need to have the secretary of state engaged in this issue right now.
In fact, I'm not sure I would have him at this speech."
Roger
also dismissed the idea, put out by the administration, that the
transfer of the sailors could not happen at night because it would be
too dangerous.
"This notion that it
happens at night and can't be done safely is absolute hooey, absolute
hooey," Rogers said. "This should be done, it should be done
immediately, and I think every level of our government should be applied
to this, including our secretary of state."
Farsi
Island is an area where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps -- which
the semi-official Fars News agency said detained the service members --
tends to operate, and they are much more aggressive than the Iranian
Navy.
The Fars News agency also
reported that the American boats were equipped with three, 50-caliber
machine guns. The boats crossed a little more than a mile into
Iranian-patrolled waters, reported Fars, which cited information
recorded on the GPS device of the American vessels and now in the hands
of the IRGC.
Iran's official state news agency, IRNA, reported that the boats were "rescued" by Iranian navy sailors.
Iranian representatives at the U.N. mission in New York had no comment.
A shadow on State of the Union Address
House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement that he was "closely monitoring the situation," and Republican Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner suggested to Tapper on CNN that the President delay the start of the speech.
"I
think the White House needs to be honest and transparent as quickly as
possible with the members of the Congress, the House and the Senate,"
Gardner said before the address began.
The issue quickly became a discussion topic on the 2016 campaign trail.
GOP
front-runner Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Cedar Falls,
Iowa, said the incident highlighted that the U.S. "isn't the same
country."
"It's just an indication of
where the hell we're going," Trump said. "I mean, hopefully, they get
released and fast. But it seems to be an indication of where we're
going."
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson
tweeted: "While POTUS is preparing to talk about his so called
"accomplishments", 10 of our American sailors are being held by #Iran."
And
former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tweeted: "If our sailors aren't coming
home yet, they need to be now. No more bargaining. Obama's humiliatingly
weak Iran policy is exposed again."
Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz also joined in the Obama-bashing. "This is the latest
manifestation of the weakness of Barack Obama, that every bad actor ...
views Obama as a laughingstock," he said.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum demanded the sailors' immediate return.
"WH
says our sailors are being given courtesies? This is feckless. WH is
endangering our troops. Demand their return NOW!" he tweeted.
Impact on nuclear deal
The
arrest of the sailors came days before the deal agreed to between Iran
and world powers to freeze Tehran's nuclear program is expected to go
into force. The IRGC is typically seen as a hardline opponent of
President Hassan Rouhani's more moderate government, which engineered
the deal but has had little choice to fall in behind it after the
negotiations were endorsed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
The IGRC, which is largely
responsible for Iran's nuclear research, is also expected to benefit
financially from the lifting of sanctions under the pact in return for a
halting of Tehran's nuclear program. But the lifting of sanctions is
what is due to begin with the pending implementation, and this incident
could throw a wrench in the works.
The
capture of the Navy sailors was quickly seized on by U.S. opponents of
the nuclear deal as the latest in a series of provocations by Tehran
since the deal was agreed, which include aggressive attempts to wield
power in its immediate neighborhood and ballistic missile tests that the
United Nations charged violated a Security Council resolution.
"This
kind of openly hostile action is not surprising. It's exactly what I
and so many others predicted when President Obama was negotiating the
nuclear deal with Iran -- that it would embolden their aggression
towards the United States and our allies in the region," Arkansas
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton told Blitzer on "The Situation Room."
Cotton also pointed to its timing right before the State of the Union.
"It's
humiliating to Barack Obama and therefore the United States to have
American sailors held hostage during his final State of the Union,"
Cotton said.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another 2016 Republican presidential candidate, also criticized Obama and the nuclear deal.
"Iran
is testing the boundaries of this administrations resolve and everybody
knows the boundaries are pretty wide and the administration is willing
to let them get away with many things. You'll only see this accelerate
since the deal was signed with Iran," he said. "That's why as president
on my first day in office I will repeal the nuclear deal that Barack
Obama has signed wi
"Certainly the United States
has been concerned of the kind of provocative destabilizing actions that
have been a hallmark of Iranian behavior over the last several
decades," Earnest said. "In fact, that is why ... the United States and
this president made it a priority to organize the international
community to reach an agreement with Iran that will prevent them from
obtaining a nuclear weapon."
The rising
tensions between Iran and other regional powers and the United States
also may play into a volatile political environment inside the country
ahead of crucial elections in the Islamic Republic next month for the
country's parliament, the Majlis, and a powerful body called the
Assembly of Experts that has the power to appoint the supreme leader.
Back
in 2007, Iran captured 15 British sailors and marines in the Persian
Gulf and accused them of trespassing in Iranian territorial waters
before releasing them almost two weeks later. The British service
members were paraded before then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and
critics said their apologies were extracted under duress. Britain
maintained that its service members never entered Iranian waters.
In 2004, three British patrol boats
were boarded and seized by Iranian security forces in the Shatt al Arab
waterway which divides Iraq and Iran. The crew of the three boats,
including eight British sailors and marines, were blindfolded and
paraded on Iranian state television and held captive for three days.
After
the 2007 seizure, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen told
CNN's Barbara Starr that, "We've got procedures in place which are very
much designed to carry out the mission and protect the sailors who are
there, and I would not expect any sailors to be able to be seized by the
Iranian navy or the Iranian Republi
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