And, Of Course, the Sailors Will Take the Hit

They will forever be branded as the fools who lost their way in Iranian waters.

[Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter ] said the crews of two American patrol craft were not on a clandestine mission and “obviously had misnavigated” when they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base.

The 10 sailors on the boats did not report the navigational error to their superiors before they were taken by the Iranians, Mr. Carter said. “It may have been they were trying to sort it out at the time when they encountered the Iranian boats,” Mr. Carter said.

[...]

According to these officials, the Navy first lost radio contact with the boats on Tuesday afternoon, and after the boats failed to make a scheduled refueling stop, the Navy sent search and rescue aircraft to look for them. GPS equipment on the boats showed the boats were in Iranian territorial waters. The rescue aircraft, an official said, also entered Iranian airspace, after first alerting the Iranian authorities that the two boats were missing.

Current and former Navy officials said Thursday that the seizure of the two boats reflected not just a major navigational blunder by the crew but possibly a serious lapse of oversight by more senior leaders at the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

“This was a debacle,” said one retired admiral with long experience in the Persian Gulf, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments. “The Iranians closely monitor their territorial waters, their airspace, and their land borders. We have standard operating procedures to avoid incidents like this, and they obviously weren’t followed here.”

  NYT

The sailors will be forever branded, and possibly a more senior officer will be sacrificed.

In the cramped international waters of the Persian Gulf — which the Americans call the Arabian Gulf, ceding nothing to Tehran — relations between the Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have long been tense. Both sides routinely spy on each other, and incidents are not infrequent.

They just got caught this time.

"Arabian Gulf ... ceding nothing to Tehran." Jesus. Petty, petulant and childish. Hallmarks of warmongers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.