PHOTO: Moment of detention of 10 US Navy personnel by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday
Why did Iran’s Revolutionary Guards detain 10 US Navy personnel? And why were they released within 24 hours?
I appeared on Monocle 24’s The Globalist on Wednesday afternoon to explain how the incident — the incursion into Iranian waters by two American boats because of a technical problem, and the suspicion of the Guards that this was a US intelligence mission — soon became a threat to the implementation of the July nuclear deal and thus the removal of US and European sanctions on Iran.
The discussion explains how the episode intersected with the in-fighting within Iran’s regime, ahead of February elections, and how it was quickly addressed by the link between the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the US State Department.
Listen from 10:12
