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Aussie sailors repelled Iran attack, BBC says

Iranian naval forces tried to capture an Australian boarding team in the Persian Gulf — even before they seized and held 15 British sailors and Marines — but where the British sailors were taken captive, the Australian sailors repelled their attackers, BBC News reported Thursday.

The Australian and British incidents were very similar, according to what British military sources told the BBC: An Royal Australian Navy team had been searching a cargo ship in the northern Persian Gulf when Iranian operatives approached in small boats. But the Aussies “were having none of it,” the BBC reported

They reboarded the ship they had just searched and trained their weapons on the Iranians, warning them “in colorful language” to back off. The Iranians withdrew. The Australian sailors were later extracted by helicopter, according to the story. Reuters reported that the boarding team was from the frigate Adelaide. It also reported that two Australian sailors were awarded medals after the incident.

More than the incident itself, the BBC reported, what concerns Royal Navy officials is that commanders apparently didn’t apply any lessons from the earlier Iranian-Australian encounter to prevent their own boarding team from being captured

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard surprised 15 British sailors and Marines from the frigate Cornwall on March 23 after they had searched a cargo ship. According to what commanders said in a press conference much later, there was a brief standoff in which the British team realized it was outgunned, then stood down. The sailors and Marines were imprisoned in Iran, where they became the focal point of an international media propaganda campaign, until they were finally released in what Iran called a goodwill gesture.