Iran’s seizure of two American naval vessels and their crews on Tuesday likely violated the principle of “innocent passage” in international maritime law, The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) on Thursday. Officials are looking into whether one of the sailors may have “fat-fingered” a navigation unit, entering erroneous coordinates...

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The head of the Iranian armed forces called Tuesday’s seizure of two American naval vessels and their crews a “lesson” to members of Congress, Iran’s semi-official PressTV network reported on Wednesday. “We hope the incident in north of the Persian Gulf, which will not be probably the American forces’ last mistake in...

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The increasing diplomatic activity between the United States and Iran, and specifically between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, has “unsettled” longtime American allies, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. The Obama administration has insisted that the nuclear deal that Iran signed with global...

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Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman John McCain (R – Ariz.) and State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner both raised the possibility on Wednesday that Iran’s treatment of American sailors that it detained was a violation of international law. McCain, a former Navy officer and prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, said in a...

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Attempts by the administration of President Barack Obama to downplay the significance of Iran’s seizure of two American naval boats and their crews on Tuesday underscore the degree to which the nuclear deal with Iran holds the president’s foreign policy legacy hostage, Josh Rogin and Eli Lake wrote in an...

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Iran has released ten American sailors and two United States Navy boats that they seized Tuesday and held overnight. The country claimed that the U.S. had apologized for entering Iranian waters. The Navy lost contact with the boats as they traveled between Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, and Kuwait....

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Iran has captured ten U.S. Navy sailors aboard two American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. The ships were moving between Kuwait and Bahrain when the Navy lost contact with them, the Associate Press reported. “We have been in contact with Iran and have received assurances that the crew and the vessels...

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A senior Iranian official denied that Iran has deactivated its Arak heavy water reactor, contradicting claims made earlier this week by the semi-official Fars news agency, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The Fars report, which said that Iran dismantled the core of its Arak reactor and filled it with cement,...

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Russia is facing criticism over reports that it bombed the office of an American NGO in the central Syrian province of Idlib, Foreign Policy wrote on Monday. The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) said in a statement that its field office has been “completely destroyed” by a Russian airstrike. The organization’s...

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The United States Treasury Department sanctioned a Lebanese businessman for his support of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, marking the first application of the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015, The Hill reported on Thursday. The act passed both houses of Congress unanimously, and was signed into law by President Obama last month....

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