January 22, 2021
The Pasdaran released this photo of its gunboats in a massed sailing January 9 passed Farsi Island in the northern Persian Gulf to celebrate the capture four years earlier of 10 US sailors in two US Navy gunboats. The Americans and their boats were freed one day later on orders from Tehran, which acknowledged the men had simply lost their way and were not trying to invade Iran when they were found three miles inside Iranian waters. The Pasdaran continue to treat the incident as a huge victory for the Islamic Republic, even though Tehran issued a statement saying the incursion was “inadvertent and unintentional.” The Tasnim news agency said “more than 700 boats” took part in this celebration, which is double the high end estimate for the number of gunboats operated by the Pasdaran. The US Navy disciplined several men for the error of sailing into Iranian waters.
