A former SEAL Officer's take on the recent Iran/U.S. Sailors incident:

"I hope none of my FB friends are gullible enough to believe the strayed into Iranian waters and had mechanic problems nonsense. I rarely pull out my dusty old trident, but in this case, here goes. I was a Navy SEAL officer in the 1980s, and this kind of operation (transiting small boats in foreign waters) was our bread and butter.

Today, these boats both not only had radar, but multiple GPS devices, including chart plotters that place your boat's icon right on the chart. The claim by Iran that the USN boats "strayed into Iranian waters" is complete bull$h!t.

For an open-water transit between nations, the course is studied and planned in advance by the leaders of the Riverine Squadron, with specific attention given to staying wide and clear of any hostile nation's claimed territorial waters. The boats are given a complete mechanical check before departure, and they have sufficient fuel to accomplish their mission plus extra.

If, for some unexplainable and rare circumstance one boat broke down, the other would tow it, that's why two boats go on these trips and not one! It's called "self-rescue" and it's SOP.

This entire situation is in my area of expertise. I can state with complete confidence that both Iran and our own State Department are lying. The boats did not enter Iranian waters. They were overtaken in international waters by Iranian patrol boats that were so superior in both speed and firepower that it became a "hands up!" situation, with automatic cannons in the 40mm to 76mm range pointed at them point-blank. Surrender, hands up, or be blown out of the water. I assume that the Iranians had an English speaker on a loudspeaker to make the demand. This takedown was no accident or coincidence, it was a planned slap across America's face.

Just watch. The released Sailors will be ordered not to say a word about the incident and the Iranians will have taken every GPS device, chart-plotter etc off the boats, so that we will not be able to prove exactly where our boats were taken.

The "strayed into Iranian waters" story being put out by Iran and our groveling and appeasing State Dept. is utter and complete BS from one end to the other." -


 Matt Bracken