McCain threatens to call in US sailors nabbed in Iran waters

Republican Senator John McCain has threatened to subpoena a number of US sailors whose recent trespassing into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf cost them arrest.

McCain said on Sunday he would subpoena 10 American sailors to testify about their brief detention in Iran if the US administration does not provide the findings of an investigation into the incident by March 1.

"It's an option that I do not want to exercise," McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters as he was returning to the United States from an international security conference in Germany, Reuters reported.

Naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) arrested the sailors after their patrol boats entered the country’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on January 12.

The following day, the IRGC announced that ten US Marines were released after Americans apologized for the incident.

The two US Navy crafts carrying the 10 Marines had drifted three miles into the waters surrounding the Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. US officials later blamed a navigational problem for sailors’ drifting astray.

On January 13, Iran released a video showing the moment the sailors were arrested.

The release of the footage irked American officials, including US Secretary of State John Kerry who said he was very “angry and frustrated” at the release of the video.

McCain said he had been told the sailors were still being debriefed, but added that he assumed that administration members were "dragging their feet" in completing an investigation into the incident.

"I guarantee you, if they don't have a debrief by the first of March like they said, we'll have a hearing and we'll subpoena. We're not going to wait any longer," McCain threatened.

"We will subpoena the individuals if we have to."

McCain said he raised the case in a meeting on Saturday with Kerry on the sidelines of the security conference in Munich, Germany.

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