With just hours to go before Obama's last State of the Union address, the US president suffered his latest foreign policy fiasco when around noon local time, Iran arrested 10 US sailors in a boat that has allegedly entered deep into Iranian territorial waters.
Dan Drezner’s reviews the story of Iran’s brief detention of 10 U.S. sailors after they had accidentally drifted into Iranian waters, and here’s what he finds:
So, to sum up: Compared to a similar incident in 2007, this was handled much more quickly and with a minimum of fuss. It’s almost as if U.S. diplomacy toward Iran has yielded some benefits or something.
The ten US sailors who were captured by Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters have been released. The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.
On Tuesday evening, just prior to President Obama’s last State of the Union address, a geopolitical black swan landed on Farsi Island.
Ten US sailors and two US Navy boats were seized by Iran when they purportedly entered Iranian waters “illegally.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse.
After several of weeks of sharp currency devaluation, the market was carefully watching last night's China trade data to see if the Yuan debasement had led to a positive trade outcome to the world's second biggest economy, and as reported last night, it was not disappointed when China reported a December trade surplus of $60.09 billion from $54.1 billion in November, as a result of exports rising (2.3%), the first increase since June, while imports declined by just 4%, the lowest since 2014 despite China importing a record amount of oil, or 33.2 million tons, ostensibly to take advantage of