As long as the Iranians have our vessels - this will continue to be an embarrassment to the Democrat Party.
False humility. This went down just about exactly as they (bammy and his cohorts in crime) intended it to go down.
This was a moment that showed the world Iran can be trusted, they are good guys, ready to play nice in the international community. You couldn't have scripted it better in Hollywood. (a-la "Wag The Dog") That's the problem, this was too perfect. The timing relative to the sanctions coming off, the number and type of boats (oddly enough no-one has mentioned weapons on board, were they unarmed?), even had a female sailor making a cameo.
The only mistake, if you can call it that, is that they apparently didn't quite get their story straight on which revision of the script they were going with:
Early on we heard one of the boats ran out of fuel and drifted. This with a boat listed as having greater than 250 nmi range on a trip of gee, just about 250 nmi. Yet the place they "ran out of gas" was only about 1/2 there. Problem with that story is the other boat, why didn't it simply tow the first boat along or at least keep them in international waters?
Then "the story" was one of the boats was disabled and drifted. Same basic problem as with the out of gas story - what about the second boat?
Now "the story" is they made a navigational error. As others have pointed out, these kind of small boat transits are planned extensively because you are in a relatively small craft on a big sea. So how many people would have to screw up the plan to put them in proximity of an Iranian island? I would guess a dozen or more ashore. Then once the transit started, two boats, two compasses, two sets of charts, two GPSes, at least a couple of people on each boat tracking their progress... Nope, I don't buy the "navigational error" story either. Requires too many mistakes at too many stages by too many people. Extremely unlikely.
Thinking of my own time leading small boat detachments, I wonder why they got there in the first place? Was no one paying attention? They even have GPS now. There were two boats, so one could have towed the other. Back in my Old Navy even if I was leading LCM-8 landing craft without radar, I would have had a chart and noted danger bearings. Maybe they should have apologized, but I doubt it?
Could be the Iranians have a different definition of territorial waters to which they want this Administration and our Navy to subscribe? That seems more likely.
Finally how could the Navy lose track of these boats? Why were the crews not initiating contact? During an amphibious exercise my wave of assault boats were swallowed by a fog. When I saw that fog coming I made sure the flag ship could vector us back to our LPD.
The events with the two riverine boats directed my memory back to the Cold War, which involved Communist China as well as the Soviet Union. We had a destroyer squadron stationed in Taiwan that was discontinued by the time I joined my LST in Japan. As a substitute every time a ship stationed in Yokosuka Japan went down to Vietnam it went through the Taiwan Straits. Our captain made it clear that if any ChiCom ship tried to intercept us we would fight. The prospect was not that exciting because our heaviest armament were three dual 3â€50cal anti-aircraft mounts. But the Pueblo incident was on everyone’s mind and that was going to be our response.
As far as I am concerned everything we have been told by this Administration and their acolytes in the Navy is a lie.
Here is a link to the best article I have found so far about the boats. http://www.boblonsberry.com/writings.cfm?go=4