Iran Responds to U.S. Rescue

Iran thanked the United States on Saturday for a naval operation that broke up a pirate attack on the Gulf of Oman and freed 13 Iranian prisoners who had been held captive by the pirates for 45 days. "We consider the actions of the U.S. forces in saving the lives of the Iranian seamen to be a humanitarian and positive act, and we welcome such behavior," Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said. But the country’s hard-line Farsi News Agency, which is tightly connected to the brutal Revolutionary Guard, criticized the rescue as a Hollywood-style propaganda operation.