Navy 1, Pirates 0

The New York Times has the story by David Goodman and Robert Mackey:

The United States Navy rescued thirteen Iranians whose fishing vessel was seized by Somali pirates more than a month ago in the North Arabian Sea, the Pentagon announced on Friday. In a conference call with reporters, Rear Admiral Craig S. Faller, the commander of an American carrier strike group patrolling the area, explained that the fifteen pirates had surrendered to a boarding party from the USS Kidd, a destroyer that intercepted the Iranian-flagged al-Molai on Thursday after receiving a distress call. On Friday morning, the pirates were transferred to a a detention facility aboard the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier.
Commander Jennifer L. Ellinger, the commanding officer of the Kidd, said that the Iranians “were extremely grateful” to the sailors who rescued them. After the pirates were removed, the crew of the fishing vessel was provided with food and left for home on Friday, wearing USS Kidd baseball caps.
It was the second time in a week that the carrier, which left the Persian Gulf for the North Arabian Sea late last month, found itself at the center of the news during a tense and very public standoff with Iran. On Tuesday the Iranian military warned that it would take unspecified action if the aircraft carrier returned to the gulf.
The Pentagon said the Iranian crew had been held for 40 to 45 days in harsh conditions by fifteen pirates, with limited food and water, as the pirates used the large captured vessel, the Iranian-flagged al-Molai, as a “mother ship” in further raids. “They were held hostage, with limited rations, and we believe were forced against their will to assist the pirates with other piracy operations,” said Josh Schminky, an agent with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service.
The Kidd, an American destroyer that is part of a strike group traveling with the Stennis, intercepted the al-Molai on Thursday after receiving a distress call, the military said. According to the statement, a team from the destroyer boarded the vessel and freed the crew. The military statement did not include any report of violence.
Coming amid an increasingly pitched war of words between Western powers and Iran, the freeing of the Iranians by soldiers from the very same carrier threatened earlier this week offered the United States an unexpected public relations coup. The military statement included photographs and a video posted to YouTube (above) that showed roughly a dozen men in colorful t-shirts standing at the bow of the fishing vessel with their hands raised high above their heads.
“The captain of the al-Molai expressed his sincere gratitude that we came to assist them. He was afraid that without our help, they could have been there for months,” Schminky said.
It was not immediately clear by what means the rescued men were being returned to Iran. The rescue of the Iranians appeared to put the Iranian government in an awkward position, as it strikes a defiant posture in the face of new economic sanctions attacking its oil exports. On Thursday, Iranian officials called the intensified efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program tantamount to “an economic war”, and vowed to conduct a new round of military drills near the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian military, fresh off ten days of naval exercises near the strait that ended this week, said it would hold a new round of war games soon. The defense minister, Brigadier Ahmad Vahidi, in comments reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency, said the military’s exercises would be “its greatest naval war games” and would occur “in the same region in the near future.”

Rico says no, the post title is not a football score, or even a baseball score, but the real thing... (And that's the real NCIS, too, not the bogus stuff on television.)