Tasnim News Agency - “Extensive Information” Obtained from US Sailors Captured by IRGC

Good points but the numbers for the crew are what they run with and they would not have the diver capabilities in those numbers it would be a plus up mission with UCT that is trained to do the tap in mission. They do how ever conduct transport of HVT's and can do that with the numbers they had.

Yes I agree the plus up mission is highly unlikely and thus my claim the capture was in international waters. There were other third party problems that I feel contributed to the "navigational" problem. I think the Saudi's informed 5th Fleet that the transit through their waters would no longer be allowed and forced the boats to use a northern transit. Saudi's had cut ties to Iran a couple of weeks before the incident occurred. We're talking diplomatic and economic relations with Iran. This was in response to attacks to their diplomatic assets after they executed a cleric. As well I'm sure they were/are not to pleased with us in lifting sanctions as a part of the nuke deal with Iran. The removal of safe passage in Saudi waters was their diplomatic response. The boats then had no other choice than to shoot the gap between Farsi Island and mainland Iran. Again information the State Dept. really would like to keep out of the spot light - thus the half cooked excuses for how and why this happened. If it wasn't for the billions I feel this could have easily turned into another hostage crisis.

Yes, and CRF has been conducting the same mission for over 14 years so you know Iran has been watching and waiting. I am pretty sure they had their Jammers on but if not they could have been jammed forcing NAVGEAR to go down. I have trained with these guy's before and trained them in Land Convoy OPS and they use same principles as we do running convoys. I was part of Expeditionary planning command to help them develop tactics so do have some concept of what they were doing and I know NECC master Chief and a couple of RIVRON CPO's they belong to what is called NECC that is part of the community we belong to Providing special trained Expeditionary forces to Combatant Commanders. I would say they may have been on a HVT mission because there was a report that they did not hit their fuel link up that mission does not require that and could lay claim to what you stated.

They were not inserting a SPEC OPS team...that kind of thing would be way out of their ability and training. You mentioned radar, this works on these kind of craft only if you have a fixed point of reference. Not an option. Chart plotters work if you have an idea how to navigate...look ta the actual background of these sailors. They were Master At Arms...Navy Security. There was no secret mission, but the real reason was a total failure on the part of their leadership. The kind of stuff everyone describes here would have been handled by SWCC....a part of NAVSPECWAR. No big Navy