Iran frees 5 Britons caught in Persian Gulf on racing yacht
Iran has released five British nationals who were arrested after allegedly straying into Iranian territorial waters while on their racing yacht last week, state radio said today.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband talked with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki late Tuesday and called for the release of the men, according to media reports. “After getting necessary guarantees, Iran released the five,” state radio said, Reuters reported.
The men were released after Iranian authorities who interrogated them found their entry into Iranian waters happened by mistake, according to the official IRNA news agency.
Iranian officials Tuesday had confirmed the arrests and announced that the five men would be brought before the nation’s judiciary.
Ali Reza Tangsiri, naval commander for the Revolutionary Guard, told the Fars News Agency that his forces detained the men Nov. 25 as they were heading from the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the boat was scheduled to take part in an annual sailing competition from the emirate to Muscat, Oman.
“The Revolutionary Guard has full control over the waters of the Persian Gulf and confronting . . . the foreign forces and arresting them is the responsibility of the Revolutionary Guard,” he said.
Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a top-ranking aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, earlier had said the five sailors would face the country’s judiciary, which has been called an instrument of hard-liners.
British officials had sought information about the fate of the arrested men, who had been aboard a racing yacht owned by Sail Bahrain. A British Foreign Ministry statement said the crew members were in Iran and were “understood to be safe and well.”
Relations between London and Tehran have deteriorated since the unrest sparked by Ahmadinejad’s reelection in the disputed June 12 balloting. Iranian hard-liners accuse British officials and news media of fomenting the unrest.
Iran’s state television criticized “foreign media hype” over the detention of the five, and the Fars News Agency reported that a group of hard-line students had planned to gather outside the British Embassy today to protest the “illegal intrusion” of the sailors into Iranian waters.
Iran captured 15 British sailors and marines on patrol off the coast of Iraq in a March 2007 incident that raised tensions in the volatile gulf region. Iran let them go amid an international uproar.
Iran is also irked by the West’s censure of its nuclear program and has vowed to respond harshly to the diplomatic rebuke Friday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ahmadinejad said Tuesday on state television that his government was reviewing the option of decreasing cooperation with the IAEA.
He also criticized Russia, which has long had a commercial role in Iran’s nuclear program, for siding with the agency’s resolution.
“Russia made a mistake. It has no correct analysis about the current situation of the world,” he said.
And of the IAEA, he said, “Friendly relations with the agency are over.”
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