Iran Expected to Free 8 British Sailors Today

Eight British naval personnel detained in Iran were expected to be freed this morning, Britain’s Foreign Office said, after talks on their release were suspended late Wednesday.

The six Royal Marines and two other sailors were to spend their third night in the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, but a Foreign Office spokesman said he expected the men, seized on a waterway on the Iran-Iraq border, would be freed soon.

“It is going to happen ... in the morning,” the spokesman said in London.

Sources close to the talks said the parties were discussing the return of military equipment seized with the men. A British diplomat negotiating the release in the southwestern port of Bandar Mahshahr -- down the coast from the Shatt al Arab waterway, where the men were arrested Monday -- said he had visited them.

“They were fit, well and well-treated,” he said.

Diplomats and analysts have various theories on why Iran arrested the Britons, including a response to British pressure over Iran’s nuclear program and overzealousness by a local commander.

A British military source acknowledged that the men might have strayed into Iranian waters in bad weather. They had been delivering a small patrol boat to Iraqi river police and were carrying only their personal weapons, Britain’s Defense Ministry said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said an inquiry had found that the eight entered the waters by mistake.