The detention and treatment of 10 United States sailors earlier this year by Iran’s regime was inconsistent with international law, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday.
“As I made clear then, Iran’s actions were outrageous, unprofessional and inconsistent with international law, and nothing we’ve learned about the circumstances of this incident since then changes that fact,” Carter told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.
Thursday’s remarks appear to be his strongest public statements against Tehran’s behavior in January, The Hill reported.
Carter previously said the Iranian regime’s actions angered him, but avoided labeling the incident a violation of international law.
“I was very, very angry at it,” Carter told reporters in January. “And I’m not going to give you the international law answer, but I can tell you, Americans wouldn’t have done that.”
On January 12, Iran’s regime detained the sailors for 16 hours.
Since the incident, Iran’s regime has been releasing propaganda, such as videos showing sailors kneeling with their hands behind their head, apologizing and crying. This week, Iran’s regime also claimed that it collected 13,000 pages worth of information from laptops and other devices during the detention.
Carter’s labeling of the incident as inconsistent with international law comes after the U.S. Navy has repeatedly called it that.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the incident, said he appreciated Carter’s comments.
But McCain also pressed Carter on whether he’s planning any specific action to respond to the incident.
“You’ve made it quite clear that you’re outraged and all that, but what specifically do you recommend to do in response to that?” asked McCain, chairman of the committee.
During the incident, Carter said, the Pentagon was prepared to protect the sailors. But he did not offer a recommendation for how to respond to Tehran’s behavior since then.
“At the time of the incident, we prepared to protect our people,” he said. “Turns out they were released in time. We later had the opportunity to see them being filmed and the way they were, and it made it very clear that that’s not the kind of behavior we would want to engage in.”