Adrian Hamilton: Iran has won this round on points. Is it a sign of a new pragmatism towards the West?

British ministers sounding off about how evil the regime is will sound more hollow after this

Thursday, 5 April 2007

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So, honour has been satisfied, or, at least, dishonour avoided. The British hostages are being returned without the British government either accepting the Iranian case that they had been in Iranian waters or apologising for it. But then Tehran hasn't apologised either for the seizure of the 15 sailors and marines and their use in video "confessions". If anything, it has gained the merit of magnanimity and surprising expectation by being so quick to end what could have been a long drawn-out and potentially damaging crisis.

But then that is the virtue of diplomacy. Much of the discussion as the captives return home will be concerned with who won and who lost in this furious round of Anglo-Iranian gamesmanship. Britain will claim its tactics in seeking UN, EU and US support finally pressured Iran to give up the hostages. Iran will say such tactics only delayed the solution to a confrontation it never wanted to escalate much further in any case.

Having gained the propaganda victory of tweaking the lion's tail and then generously handing it back to the tormented beast, most Iranians, and even the radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will feel well satisfied with a fight they feel they have won on points. On the Middle Eastern streets, where it matters, they are probably right. The videos of the captives admitting their errors and the smiles and farewells of the final release will have gone down well.

Except for a relatively small number of orchestrated nationalists, this was not a confrontation that most Iranians wanted, and they may well have lost patience if it had seemed to be harming Iran's standing in the world.

Back here, where the return of the hostages may be greeted with as much embarrassment as relief in view of the fact that they should never have been exposed to such a capture in the first place, the reckoning is rather more difficult to judge. Certainly, in propaganda terms, it is a lot harder for Blair to proclaim as much of a triumph for his efforts in gaining the release as Ahmadinejad achieved in granting it.

In truth, we don't really know the subtleties of negotiation behind the sudden release, whether it was connected with the release the day before of an Iranian diplomat taken in Baghdad or whether there was, despite the denials, some quid pro quo involving the five Iranians taken by US troops in Arbil earlier this year.

Nor, for that matter, do we really know what went on behind the scenes in Iran. Was this a deep-laid plot to gain hostages for negotiating purposes or was it a piece of opportunism by the Revolutionary Guard? Was it sanctioned by the supreme ruler Ayatollah Khamenei, and did the final denouement represent a significant sidelining of the radical Ahmadinejad in favour of the more pragmatic security chief and head nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani?

The manner of the relief was clearly calculated to ensure that as much credit as possible was given to the President. But whether this was to save his face and keep the radicals happy or whether it was a genuine testament to his tactics is difficult to be sure of.

Personally, I think the incident was more opportunism than deep-laid plot and that, once the ramifications began to become clear, the regime, with the Ayatollah's approval, acted to take it from the hands of the Revolutionary Guard.

Yet, whatever happened, one thing is clear: Iran has come out of this little adventure relatively stronger by acting now, just as it might have come out a great deal the worse, and weaker, if it had escalated the row.

By moving decisively, and making the whole release into almost a party of goodwill and congratulations, Tehran has not just defused the crisis, it has also made it much more difficult to isolate and confront it over Iraq, its nuclear ambitions or whatever. It now looks as if the radicals don't have it all their own way in the country and that it can, and will, act pragmatically when it suits it.

The world, and British diplomats, had feared that this was going to turn into a grisly case of ritual humiliation of an imperialist power through its captives or, as bad, a Hizbollah-like seizure of hostages to effect a prisoner exchange. It hasn't proved to be like that. British ministers sounding off about how evil the regime is will sound more hollow after this, to their own voters as well as allies.

That could be important, in timing as intent. For the past five years Tehran has been the object of a rising chorus of accusation and pressure from the US, including hints of military action, a squeeze on its foreign finances and a constant barrage of claims that it was funding the Iraqi insurgency, determined on nuclear weaponry, that it was orchestrating an arc of Shia revolt throughout the Middle East and acting as the chief funder of terrorist groups in Lebanon as Palestine. The claims were unproven, if not grotesquely overblown, but the pressure, together with Iran's obdurate response, has had the effect of increasingly isolating the country in the international community.

The plates are now shifting. While President George Bush has kept determinedly on a course of confrontation with Iran and marginalisation of Syria, the Democrat-controlled Congress is moving in the opposite direction. The current visit to Syria by Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker, to the obvious fury of the President, is one indication of the extent to which the newly empowered Democrat party is prepared to carve out a different Middle East policy to the White House. Iran could be next in its sights for a diplomatic initiative.

In the Middle East itself, the US-led effort to form a Sunni axis against Iran has been partly stymied (for the moment, at any rate) by Saudi Arabia's determination to forge its own path to peace, one that it is anxious to have Iran on board for. In Iraq, the government has made the first moves towards drawing Iran into a security arrangement for the region.

Even Britain's final preference for "discussion" rather than confrontation with Iran over the hostages could be said to be take it away from the Bush liturgy. When push came to shove, the UK found it didn't have the international support it had hoped for, nor the military muscle to prevent, or respond, to such a blatant provocation.

Whether Britain is closer to Iran or feels harder towards it as a result of this experience is largely irrelevant, however. If the regime in Tehran, as would seem the case from yesterday's moves, is moving to a more pragmatic, diplomatic path, and if the rest of the world is equally changing course with it, then the hostage crisis - marginal though it is - could go down as a seminal moment.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk