Reassuring.

Iranian military forces seized two U.S. Navy boats Tuesday and are detaining them on Iran’s Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, senior U.S. officials told NBC News.

The 10 American sailors aboard the small riverine vessels were on a training mission around noon ET when one of the boats may have experienced mechanical failure and drifted into Iranian-claimed waters, officials said. Iran’s coast guard took them into custody.

The officials said it’s unclear whether the sailors — nine men and one woman — had strayed into Iranian territorial waters before they were captured.

Obama will trumpet his alleged success in reaching a nuclear deal with Iran tonight, and will say nothing about the U.S. sailors in Iranian custody.

[guest post by JVW]

Items for discussion:

(1) In response to the awful attacks on women which took place on New Year’s Eve in several Western European cities, so-called “right wing” mobs in Cologne took to the streets and randomly beat Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian men on Sunday night. There have been four reported attacks — far fewer of course than the number of sexual assaults reported by women on New Year’s Eve — but so far no arrests have been made. A cynic might wonder if the Cologne Police, heavily criticized for their inaction New Year’s Eve and the subsequent cover-up of the crimes committed, might be tolerating these recent attacks as a way to send a warning to the refugee community.

(2) Leaders of Eastern European countries have chided their Western neighbors for all the moral preening this fall when Berlin agreed on behalf of Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Zurich, Vienna, Stockholm, Helsinki, et al. to accept one million allegedly Syrian refugees, with few or no questions asked. I once again call your attention to the magnificent speech delivered three months ago by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the Hungarian Parliament in which he tried to warn Frau Merkel of her folly.

(3) Earlier today a Syrian national detonated himself in a popular tourist area of Istanbul, killing himself and ten others. Whether by design or coincidence, nine of the dead are German citizens. Istanbul is only nominally a part of Europe, but the fact that a tourist area was targeted ought to be a pointed warning to European leaders that their citizens are at increased risk of attacks.

Meanwhile, the ersatz Leader of the Free World will in a few hours time climb on to a podium in the chamber of Congress that houses the citizen legislators elected directly by the people of this country, and he will no doubt tell them that while Islamic Jihadist terrorism remains a challenge, our nation with its tens of thousands of newly arrived “Syrian” “refugees” stands ready to meet it head-on.

– JVW

Won’t watch it. Don’t care who’s coming. Don’t care what he says. I’m going to a concert.