Many critics of the Obama administration are apoplectic over Iran’s seizure of U.S. sailors who unintentionally strayed into Iranian waters off Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf where they were then stranded. No matter that the Iranians returned the sailors to the Navy unharmed, along with their patrol boats, in less than 24 hours after some high-level diplomacy initiated by Secretary of State John Kerry. For many Republicans, this is yet more evidence of President Obama’s weakness. Our enemies do not fear us anymore, Obama’s critics insist.
Jerry Hendrix, a retired naval officer and an active historian at the Center for a New American Security, recently wrote an article that typifies this critical view for National Review (“Iran’s Arrest of U.S. Sailors Reflects Obama’s Foreign-Policy Weakness”). Hendrix writes:
Two thousand years ago, a Roman could wander the known world confident that he would be unmolested by local unruly elements, protected only by the statement “Civis romanus sum,” I am a Roman citizen. His confidence stemmed from a demonstrated assurance that any group that dared attack a Roman would trigger a response in the form of a Roman legion, which would deal swift and brutal justice. Juxtapose this image of a previous world-spanning hegemon with the image of ten American Sailors kneeling on the deck of their own vessel with their hands clasped together over their heads. It is an image of indignity and failure that is accompanied by the smell of rotting power.
He ties Iran’s actions directly to the efforts of a president “who entered office riding a wave that rejected American exceptionalism and aggressive military operations” to present a “more modest America.”
Rather than having Kerry telephone his counterpart in Tehran to get the sailors back peacefully and quickly — which is exactly what happened — Hendrix would have preferred to see a more forceful response:
The launching of a fully loaded air wing from the Truman in conjunction with the repositioning of the [amphibious assault ship] Kearsarge [laden with 2,000 marines] would have provided the Obama administration with an opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength, diminishing Iran’s position in the Arabian Gulf and assuring allies and partners who have become suspicious of American resolve …
I take a different view.
I am glad the release of these sailors was achieved in less than one day by using the phone. Had Obama followed Hendrix’s playbook, he would have dramatically increased the risk of escalation in the Gulf. Afshon Ostovar — the author of a riveting new book on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Vanguard of the Imam — and Melissa Dalton have both eloquently discussed the high potential for military escalation in the Gulf here at War on the Rocks. The Gulf is, in Ostovar’s words, a powder keg.
Had the IRGC unexpectedly found two of the Great Satan’s patrol boats in their waters, followed by the Truman launching an air wing and a ship full of marines moving toward them, Tehran reasonably could have seen this as an attack. In that position, I probably would have. Any protestations that we were doing all this because of the patrol boats would have rung of deception; a pretext for attack. What if they then defended themselves and we were suddenly at war with Iran? I know that would actually make some in Washington happy. How would another quagmire in the Middle East serve American interests and make the United States look strong?
Anytime Americans are seized against their will, it is a bad thing. However, looking at things from the perspective of the IRGC, the paranoid defenders of Iran’s Islamic revolution, it is not surprising that they would detain U.S. sailors who showed up uninvited in their territorial waters. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard would surely do the same if Iranian sailors popped up in American waters, as they should.
We should be celebrating that diplomacy was successful, just as it was in finally achieving the release of five Americans being held hostage by Iran. And yes, we should celebrate the nuclear agreement between Iran and the five powers — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States — that enabled these negotiations and conversations. The nuclear agreement did not fundamentally alter the mutual antagonism between Iran and the United States, nor should we hold out hope that it will, but the fact that an American secretary of state can now pick up the phone and reach his counterpart in Tehran for a productive conversation is a good thing.
Perhaps critics of the Obama administration should be more careful in how they make judgments of strength versus weakness. After all, if Hendrix is correct in arguing that the taking of these sailors was evidence of Obama’s lack of strength, what does this say about President Ronald Reagan, a leader widely perceived as strong and resolute, who struggled with only limited success to bring home American hostages taken by militants in Lebanon during his administration? And let’s not even get into the sordid details of the Iran-Contra Affair.
Americans have never been Romans and the Pax Americana has always been a myth. We can never expect to be safe from violence simply due to our enemy’s fear of a heavy-handed response. Indeed, some of our enemies strike at us in order to provoke a major, expensive military response. We’ve been playing and losing that game for far too long. Holding Obama or any other president to the civis romanus standard is a recipe for disappointment.
Ryan Evans is the editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks.
Kurt NY 
Agreed that, on its face, any nation has the right to detain armed forces of another nation that impinge unbidden into its national territory, and that taking more forceful actions against Iran for what might have been an unintentional intrusion not of their making would have been improper.
But there are also grounds to question whether that was the case. It has been reported that both of our boats lost communications and GPS at the same time. Not unknown for either system to go down, I’d imagine, but when both systems go down in both boats simultaneously, something other than chance seems to be in play. We know that the Iranians have the capability to spoof GPS, which is how they captured (and then cloned) one of our drones awhile back. It’s possible that the entire incident was deliberately engineered by Iran, in which case a more forceful approach would have been justified.
Again, don’t know the full truth of the situation, and if its cause was just what it seems at first glance, I agree that the more pacific approach taken by Kerry was appropriate. But are we sure that is what took place?
Mr. Hendrix’s argument and its historical antecedent assume Roman primacy when in fact Roman history was a series of endless wars with midpower rivals, colonial border war and insurgencies. And it didn’t end well for Rome.
It’s interesting to contemplate this in light of the Bundy takedown yesterday. Both those arrests and the negotiated release of the sailors points to the virtures of strategic patience and proportionate response. In the case of the sailors, young men and women went home to their families. American military power in the Persian Gulf was not diminished and Iranian strategists know that.
Mr. Evans, why shouldn’t the Iran nuclear deal lead us to hope for normal relations with that regional power? You certainly know that Iran’s interests align remarkably well with those of the United States in the civil wars of Iraq and Syria?
Do you detect any war psychosis / warmongering in Iran? Look at Iran’s gender demographics — 60 percent of its engineers are women. It’s an educated, war-weary nation.
Furthermore, Iran is a moral force in the region for modernity, rationalism and a form of democracy, and that is the real ideological threat to region’s mdieval monarchies.
Usama
Peace Corp / Oman, 1981-83
Sorry, Peace Crops.
Usama
I mean Peace Corps. Ssomething wrong with my keyboard.
It’s the spellchecker, I suspect.
Hendrix should ask how well “Civis romanus sum” served Crassus or Varus.
The RG’s (Rev. Guard) spoofed GPS to abscond with ‘The Beast from Kandahar’ (our RQ-170 stealth drone).
The RG’s spoofed GPS to abscond with our Navy crew(s), even showing the world they could make our female sailor wear a dishtowel on her head.
I dunno about everyone else, but in the 4th grade I earned bullies sometimes only respond to equal or stronger return violence. What will happen is that if we look weak to the Arab world, no one will take our vaunted ‘diplomacy’ none too serious. Till we figure that out, we’ll sacrifice more of our people at this Middle East Altar and pay a heinous price for our inherent obliviousness.
I fear the day when a nation goes to war because one of its sailors – any sailor, male or female, officer or enlisted – was made by another nation to wear an item of non-regulation clothing in order to conform with its cultural sensibilities before returning that sailor unharmed, not even a little bit tortured or raped, to his or her country of origin.
I hate to think what your sabre-rattlers would do if a dozen US sailors turned up uninvited in Sydney just in time for the LGBT Mardi Gras in March and we draped them in something glamorous, perhaps with sequins and faux pink feathers, and just a touch of mascara and lipstick, before posting photographs of them looking somewhat ridiculous on the internet.
Instead of bloody Aussies enjoying a laugh at your expense and the US shrugging its collective shoulders and being a good sport about it, clearly only the nuclear destruction of Sodom (sorry – Sydney) would suffice to restore hyper-masculine American pride and teach the rest of the world that the US has neither a sense of humor nor of proportion, and it will not be mocked by upstart middle powers, friend or foe alike.
Please correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding of GPS is that it’s a very weak signal that can be blocked by jammers made from Radio Shack-type electronics and a power source for just a few hundred bucks.
And Iran has every right to do whatever it wants in its territorial waters.
Hell, Aussies do. If the Chinese PLA-Navy folks read this, they’ll discover that one of our deterrent strategies against invasion is to blast out Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Look at me I’m Sandra Dee’ on a loop across the radio spectrum. (Well, we don’t, but we should seriously consider it.)
Maybe Iran does deliberately block GPS around its territorial waters, maybe not.
How far out does its signal jamming work? Approximately to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit? Territorial plus one?
One could legitimately ask, ‘Is that what US sailors were there to find out?’
If the encroach was accidental and they lost their GPS signal and comms, why did they not simply use their compass (sailors are still trained and equipped to use compasses, surely? or the sun’s position in the sky and an old-fashioned wrist-watch will do just as well) turn due west (i.e. away from Iran) and get the hell out of there?
Why did they not do that? Instead of questioning why Iran detained foreign nationals who had violated its internationally-recognised maritime border, why are we not questioning why US sailors and patrol boats were loitering so close to Iran’s legitimate territorial waters?
Was it just a screw-up?
Or something more sinister? A little naval brinkmanship ahead of economic sanctions against Iran being lifted (i.e. a pretense to argue they should not be lifted)?
Did someone in the Navy try to pick a fight with Iran without the Commander-in-Chief’s authorization? Because that smacks of insubordination.
Or how about this scenario: given that a presidential election’s coming up, what if someone in the Navy thought they’d give a certain Party an opportunity for political dog-whistling its base and the conservative media (yes, I’m looking at you, Fox), knowing that security issues play better for one Party over the other?
My vote’s actually for screw-up because humans make mistakes.
Thanks to diplomacy, a peaceful resolution was achieved with the sailors returned unharmed and apparently having been appropriately fed and cared for, and US property returned undamaged. It’s a good outcome.
P.S. Australian Defence Force, please can you add Peter Allen’s ‘I go to Rio’ on to the playlist? It is, after all, Mardi Gras season.