Experts: Iran's arrest of U.S. sailors broke international law

Iran’s supreme leader is hailing his hard-line paramilitary forces as heroes for their arrest of 10 American sailors at gunpoint, but an emerging consensus of U.S. legal experts believe the provocative act was a dangerous violation of international law that has so far gone without repercussions.

The U.S. riverine boats had the right to pass expeditiously through Iran's territorial waters under the right of innocent passage without being boarded and arrested so long as they weren't engaged in a military operation such as spying. Pentagon officials have said the riverine boat crews mistakenly entered Iran's waters in the Persian Gulf due to a "navigation error" while en route to a refueling.

Their arrests nearly derailed the months of nuclear deal negotiations with Iran and U.S. officials quickly secured the sailors' release. But only hours after their release, Iran's hardliners released propaganda videos of the sailors in custody.

Iran did not have the legal standing to arrest the sailors at gunpoint and that demands a U.S. response, said one expert.

“This should be very concerning for the Navy community,” said James Kraska, a maritime law expert at the U.S. Naval War College. “This says that U.S. vessels don’t have innocent passage and that their sovereign immunity is not respected.”

As news of their arrests broke Jan. 12, the Obama administration assured the public that they would get Iran to release the sailors rapidly as part of thawing relations with the country over the nuclear deal. The sailors were freed after nearly 16 hours in captivity on Farsi Island and drove off in their riverine boats. The next day, Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Iran for its gracious treatment of the captured sailors, providing them with food and blankets. But within hours, Iran circulated images that showed the sailors surrendering at gunpoint, as well as a video where one of them apologized.

The U.S. has expressed discontent through diplomatic channels over Iran's handling of the incident, the use of the sailors for propaganda and Iran's flouting of international norms, a State Department official said.

"We have expressed our strong concern to Iran over the incident," the official said, but declined to go into detail about those concerns, who relayed them or whether Iran could face further repercussions.

The legal experts referenced the theU.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the U.S. abides by and Iran has signed but not ratified. Under it, a warship has “sovereign immunity” and can transit the territorial waters of another so long as they move “continuously and expeditiously” and do not conduct any military operations, said Craig Allen, a professor of marine and environmental affairs at the University of Washington School of Law.

Iran had the right to query the U.S. assault boats and if they didn’t like their answer, they had the right to expel them from their waters. But they didn't have the right to arrest them.

“They can say ‘You are no longer conducting an innocent passage, get out,’” Allen said. “You expel them — you don’t haul them into your port.”

Continue Reading: http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/01/27/unclos-iran-law-of-the-sea-obama-administration-sailors-arrested-farsi-island/79398324/