It depends on how they exercised that right assuming that we indeed did stray into their territorial waters. Why are you assuming that we were in their territorial waters? The Iranians seized the GPS units of both ships. I find it hard to believe that both units failed to work.
The UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982 states,
UNCLOS provides some general requirements regarding nations enforcing their laws or international law against ships from another nation. First, any enforcement measures taken against a foreign vessel can only be conducted by ships that are clearly marked and identifiable as being in the service of the enforcing nation's government. When engaging in enforcement activities, agents of the coastal nation have an obligation to not endanger the safety of navigation of other vessels and also to not bring any detained vessel to an unsafe port. In the event that a nation takes action against a foreign vessel, the nation has a duty to inform the ship's flag nation of what measures were taken.
Did Iran comport with those requirements? Why the public humiliation of the US sailors released thru official Iranian channels?
You can’t get upset if they exercise their rights. Like it or not enough fools put this idiot in office twice that we have to live with the consequences of it, and this is one of them. Another time, yes they could be warned and nothing more too it, but to say that they have no right to protect their territory, is silly.
Those rights are circumscribed. Do you think that shooting down a civilian airliner that strayed into Soviet airspace (KL 007) was appropriate? And stop creating phony strawmen. No one has said the Iranians or any other nation has no right to protect their territory.
This event was clearly meant to send a message to the US just as the missile that missed the carrier, the USS H.S. Truman, by 1500 yards was intended to do. I don't know if you have ever been to sea in a naval vessel, but 1500 yards is very close. Our response was tepid at best setting the stage for the latest incident.
We have the US saying we did not apologize after the BBC and other news agencies said we did. We have Kerry thanking the Iranians for their cooperation. Unfortunately, the Iranian video released after those comments gives the lie to those statements and demonstrates how we were humiliated.
Based on other incidents, we can't trust what our government is saying. The Iranians know how badly we and the rest of the negotiating countries want the nuclear deal to stand. Europe is flooding Iran with businessmen, Russian has signed on to build three more nuclear reactors, and the Chinese are buying oil. The Iranians get their $150 billion in frozen assets and eventually a nuclear weapon. If the reality is that the Iranians seized the ships in international waters and we are covering it up, I hope the truth comes out.
Based on your citings, what are you claiming the Iranians violated? They protected their waters, they didn’t take the boats to an unsafe port, and they notified the US of what they had done. So I am not sure what you are attempting to imply here. Nothing that has been reported violates that I can see the 1982 Convention.
Your attempt to equate this to the KLM shoot down is a bit of a stretch.
No doubt its a PR coup and humiliation, but that again is the result of having a pussy administration. That doesn’t mean that they violated any agreement. An armed vessel, full of military perssonel of another nation state enters your territorial waters without authorization... detaining the vessel and ensuring no threat isn’t exactly an unreasonable act.
Sure the Iranians used it for PR, but that doesn’t mean they violated any treaties or laws. Nothing you have cited suggests that they did.