The State Department insisted Thursday that video showing U.S. sailors on their knees while being apprehended by Iran’s military doesn’t make the United States look weak in the region.
Spokesman John Kirby was asked how the video might affect the image of the U.S. as a potent military force, just a day after Iran released 10 U.S. sailors they held overnight this week. But Kirby seemed miffed by the question and rejected its premise.
“So is the question that, because we had sailors on their knees on boats with guns pointed at them that somehow we need to be worried that there’s an image of weakness, is that the question?” he shot back.
Kirby said there’s “nobody else in the world that has as many forces in the Middle East than the United States. None.”
“There’s a robust military presence that’s not going to go away,” he added.
Kirby also said pundits should stop trying to assess from afar whether the sailors should have been boarded like that, or whether one sailor should have apologized on video for crossing into Iran’s waters.
“I’ve heard the snarking about this,” he said. “I think it’s really important, unless you’ve been on one of those boats and you’ve sailed in those waters and you’ve been faced with that danger, not to second guess what those sailors did in the moment that they did it.”
“Nobody likes to see that video, we don’t enjoy watching it here either, and I’m sure the Navy’s not enjoying watching it,” he said. “But let them work through this and figure out what happened, and then we’ll go from there.”
