Another propaganda coup for Ahmadinejad

The Iranian president releases our hostages as an Easter present, what a nice man. In the meantime, we just got our real Easter present from the Iranians....in the form of a roadside bomb.

We may have got our sailors back without having to make concessions, but Ahmadinejad is the real winner from all this. The Iranian people have been convinced that the British invaded their territory and that the Iranian authorities in their infinite mercy let the invaders go free. Meanwhile, Iran has succeeded in prizing Britain even further away from the Americans. British voters and politicians will be even more convinced that we can do business with the Iranians, and that America is the real problem. The spirit of 1938 lives on. Andrew Sullivan just about sums it up.

As Amir Taheri observes, the Iranian authorities are like scorpions. There's no point in trying to cut deals with them, we'll always get stung in the end. After almost three decades of Iran playing its games, the west still doesn't get it.