Sen. Tom Cotton, a freshman and perhaps the most hawkish member of the Foreign Relations Committee, declared that "no one should be surprised by Iran’s behavior today." | AP Photo The Iranian hostage crisis that wasn't

Wednesday's release of 10 American sailors from Iranian custody put a swift end to the latest confrontation between the U.S. and Tehran — but not before a chorus of Republicans jumped in to warn that the United States was facing a new hostage crisis.

Within hours of Tuesday's news that Iranian forces had apprehended the sailors in the Persian Gulf, the House Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted that "Iran is holding American hostages" — a term presidential hopeful Ted Cruz repeated on NBC — while Donald Trump demanded that "we want our hostages back NOW!" Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) used the crisis to call on the Obama administration to postpone part of its nuclear agreement with Iran, and Sen. Cory Gardner even suggested that President Barack Obama should postpone his State of the Union address.


"I think this is a serious enough event that we shouldn't proceed with the festivities of tonight until we have answers," the Colorado Republican told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the White House, Pentagon and the State Department kept offering reassurances that they expected the sailors to be freed soon, which happened only hours later.

The immediate political response to the episode, even as details were still trickling in, underscored deep opposition to the Obama administration's nuclear pact with Iran and its broader diplomatic detente with Tehran — and also cast in stark relief how much national security is imprisoned by partisanship.

"It was just a visceral reaction," remarked Stephen Cheney, a retired Marine Corps general and CEO of the nonpartisan American Security Project, referring to the GOP rhetoric. "It is the hatred of the administration. They don't quite have the head of steam they had last night."

Republican critics of the administration were hardly letting up Wednesday. They expressed outrage about the release of Iranian photos and videos showing the sailors being held at gunpoint — images that presidential contender Marco Rubio called "horrifying" — as well as suggestions that the U.S. had formally apologized.

But the clear implication from some of Tuesday's GOP rhetoric went even further —that Americans should be prepared to relive the nightmare of the 444-day Iran hostage crisis nearly four decades ago, when Islamic revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979.

Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the reactions "macho foreign policy posturing."

He pointed out that no one seems to disagree that at least one of the two patrol U.S. vessels had strayed into Iranian waters off Farsi Island.

"Unintentional or not, this was a U.S. naval incursion into Iran’s jurisdiction," Drezner wrote in The Washington Post on Wednesday, "Fortunately, Iran did not respond to this incident in the same way that, oh, I don’t know, a NATO ally recently responded to an aerial incursion," he added, referring to Turkey's shoot down of a Russian fighter jet last month. "They seized the ships, did not harm any of the sailors and eventually returned both the crew and the ships."

It was leading voices in the GOP, in his view, who "flew off the handle."

Sen. Tom Cotton, a freshman and perhaps the most hawkish member of the Armed Services Committee, declared that "no one should be surprised by Iran’s behavior today."

"That the president refuses to even call this brazen seizure a hostile act shows how far he is willing to go to coddle and appease the ayatollahs in order to preserve his flawed nuclear deal," the Arkansas Republican said.

His House colleague from Virginia, Rep. Rob Wittman, described the situation to POLITICO Tuesday night like this: "Iran capturing ten of our sailors, not giving them back."

"If our sailors aren’t coming home yet, they need to be now," presidential candidate Jeb Bush wrote on Twitter. "No more bargaining. Obama’s humiliatingly weak Iran policy is exposed again."

Even more mainstream Republican national security figures, like Sen. John McCain of Arizona, discarded any wait-and-see approach in favor of assailing what they considered administration weakness in the face Iranian aggression.

McCain issued a statement Tuesday criticizing what he called Iran's "provocative behavior."

Cheney, the retired general, said all the tough talk was particularly striking given the circumstances in which the American vessels entered Iranian waters.

"We made a mistake," he said. "We owned up for it. Whatever the fault was, it was ours."

Iran's leaders — prodded by the personal diplomacy off Secretary of State John Kerry — also handled the situation quite differently than they dealt with similar incidents in the past, he added.

"When you look at this and think back to the 1980s, if this had happened back then these sailors would be paraded down the street in blindfolds and handcuffs," Cheney said. "It got resolved far quicker than it would in years back."

Coming just days after a Iran conducted a missile test with little warning close to another U.S. Navy vessel, the quick release of the sailors "is pretty remarkable," he said.

Still, the anger on the right was evident Wednesday, especially after the Iranians released the images of the sailors in custody — what some asserted was a violation of the Geneva Convention and international law — and after Kerry thanked the Iranian government publicly for treating the Americans "so well."

Kerry "says US sailors were 'well taken care of' & #Iran releases these photos — unbelievable," McCain wrote on Twitter.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated which committee Tom Cotton serves on. This story has been updated.