[1][3] The British government stated that the team had been conducting a compliance inspection of a merchant ship under the mandate of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1723.

This included a statement by captured Royal Navy sailor Faye Turney, along with a letter she wrote under compulsion, which apologised for British intrusions into Iranian waters.

[8][27] The IBRU contended that "it would need a dramatic reconfiguration of the coastline marked on current charts for the median line to run to the west of the point" at which MoD had stated the incident occurred, and so be in Iranian waters.

A Lynx helicopter monitoring the boarding had resumed its reconnaissance of the area, and by the time Cornwall realised what was happening the British team was already being escorted to shore by the Iranian border patrol.

The Ministry of Defence stated that one of the boats remained data-linked to Cornwall throughout the operation and the GPS system showed them to be located well within the Iraqi area, although no direct evidence for this was given.

[38] However, this was disputed later by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report into the incident which concluded that "there is evidence to suggest that the map of the Shatt al-Arab waterway provided by the Government was less clear than it ought to have been.

In support, Joint Special Operations Command scrambled a Predator drone to assist them but the window of opportunity for a rescue mission to take place closed when the captives were moved north to Tehran.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said, "We sought a full explanation of what happened and left the Iranian authorities in no doubt that we expect immediate and safe return of our service personnel and boats."

[49] The BBC apologised to the anti-war group Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) for having used the words "abducted" and "hostages" in relation to the events.

[54] Some sections of the British press reacted angrily to the Iranian television footage of the detainees, particularly the prominence of servicewoman Faye Turney, and that she was seen wearing a head scarf.

[56] Iran's director general for Western European affairs, Ibrahim Rahimpour, said that the British boats had made "illegal entry" into Iranian territorial waters and that the personnel "were arrested by border guards for investigation and questioning".

[57] Mohammad Ali Hosseini, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, voiced his country's discontent at what he called "blatant aggression", accusing the United Kingdom of "violating the sovereign boundaries of other states".

It further stated: "After reading the information on their navigation equipment – the GPS seized from them – it was revealed that they had already intruded water borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran [5 times]".

[44] According to the Iranian consul-general in Basra, Ridha Nasir Baghban, on 29 March a group of British soldiers surrounded his consulate at about 10 a.m. and fired their weapons in the air.

[64][65] The ambassador suggested a diplomatic settlement was still possible "if Britain's government admits its mistake and apologises to Iran for its naval personnel's trespassing of Iranian territorial waters, the issue can be easily settled."

[66] On 31 March, Baghban further claimed that British forces were carrying out "provocative acts", stating that there has been intensive flying of fighter aircraft over the consulate building.

[67] Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commented on the seizure for the first time on 31 March by calling Britain "arrogant" for failing to apologise for entering Iranian waters.

[68] In a press conference on 4 April 2007, President Ahmadinejad gave a history of Iran leading to an analysis of the Iranian view of world political asymmetry.

Iran wished to divide its maritime boundaries on the basis of the equidistance principle, whereas Iraq believed the entrance of the Persian Gulf required special criteria.

"[58] On 25 March, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, urged Iran to release the detained personnel, in a telephone call to his Iranian counterpart.

Abolqassem Amangah, commander of Iran's southwestern Maritime Border Patrol Guard was awarded the third degree medal of bravery for stopping the sailors.

Ahmadinejad is thought to have acted in response to a letter from Pope Benedict XVI who appealed to Iran's Supreme Leader to free the personnel as a "goodwill gesture before Easter".

[105] At a news conference on the afternoon of Friday 6 April 2007[21][106] some of the British personnel said of their capture that some of the Iranian sailors had become "deliberately aggressive and unstable", rammed their boats and pointed their machine guns at them.

Theatrical propaganda cannot conceal the mistake made by British military on violation of Iran's territorial waters and their repeated illegal entry into the country.

[111] It was subsequently revealed that the Second Sea Lord, Vice Admiral Adrian Johns made the decision to grant the marines and sailors permission to tell their stories.

After his release, Sharafi claimed he had been kidnapped and tortured by American troops and agents of an Iraqi organisation acting under the supervision of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

During their detention, according to former detainee Marine Scott Fallon, he believed that they had endured a mock execution in which they were marched into the desert and made to stand blindfolded in front of a ditch while he heard their captors cock their weapons.

In 2004 the Royal Navy boats were operating much closer to the northern coast of the Persian Gulf in the mouth of the Shatt al Arab waterway which divides southern Iran and Iraq.

In the 2007 incident the boats were by contrast operating some distance from the Iraqi-Iranian mainland in open water and were (according to the British) 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territory.

[127][128] A MoD inquiry report later stated that tactical commanders on HMS Cornwall and in the area were not well aware of this historical context and "did not know how much they did not know", in part because of a lack of continuity in staffing.