Roger Cooper: So, no deal? Watch this space

The press conference given by six of the released naval hostages on Friday raised more questions than it answered. Why weren't the other nine there, especially the female lead? Why did they all confess to having intruded into Iranian waters? Why did they appear so happy in Tehran and go out of their way to praise Iranian kindness and hospitality? To what extent could they communicate with each other? And after going through what they now describe as a terrifying ordeal, why did they accept their goody bags with apparent gratitude and board their military helicopter at Heathrow still clutching them? Why were statements read out, rather than given impromptu, giving credence to Iran's claims that they were dictated by the Ministry of Defence?

To me, much of this looks like Stockholm syndrome. Named after a 1973 bank raid that went wrong, this condition is not uncommon among hostages, who magnify small acts of kindness and develop dependency on their captors. Under immense emotional and perhaps physical stress, Faye Turney might well have found the offer of cigarettes enough to make her write those letters, in a sense willingly. In extreme cases, such as Patty Hearst's abduction by a shadowy terrorist group in 1974, the hostage may even want to become a member of the abusers' group, as happened when Hearst became a bank robber. The Manchurian Candidate is partly based on this syndrome, and, although fiction, closely parallels the murder of Trotsky in Mexico on Stalin's orders, carried out by a "sleeping agent" trained by his own mother.

We shouldn't have been so surprised at the sudden release of Britain's 15 service personnel. Ali Larijani, the clever secretary of Iran's National Defence Council, had reacted with unexpected warmth to Britain's suggestion of bilateral talks and, significantly, how to avoid future "misunderstandings". Shortly afterwards an Iranian diplomat was released from unspecified captivity in Iraq, almost certainly with US approval. The Iraqi government is said to be considering the further release of five junior Iranian officials captured in a botched US raid in Arbil, as exclusively reported for The Independent by Patrick Cockburn. I would expect them to be freed shortly, after a decent pause to avoid the appearance of collusion.

So far, all this looks like a classic tit-for-tat exchange, of the type that has occurred several times since the Second World War. If Tony Blair couldn't get such small favours as this from the White House, the special relationship would have been in worse shape than we thought. Like the Russians, the Iranians would seem to have got a better deal.

It therefore looks possible, not to say probable, that the British sailors and Marines were captured "to order", with a view to securing the release of those Iranian detainees.

Having been sentenced to "death plus 10 years' imprisonment" as a British spy myself - which I have never been - in the late 1980s, at a trial where I was not allowed to see the evidence against me, I am curious about the alleged confessions. Faye Turney was the obvious first choice: she could quickly be released as a gesture of Islamic respect for women, with the sub-text that women shouldn't be on active service anyway. Turney was careful not to correct the unnatural English dictated to her ("representatives of the House of Commons" rather than "MPs", for example).

In my case, I refused to "confess" for six months, despite frequent beatings, and then only because I had been told that the Iranian government had denied all knowledge of my whereabouts. In solitary confinement and without consular access, I felt what was being said must be true, so a confession seemed the only hope, as my interrogator made it clear that without one I would die in jail. But, both in writing and on TV, I loaded my statements with fictitious characters from the novels of Evelyn Waugh, and referred to MI6 as the BIS. The Guardian pointed out these errors, which earned me some physical abuse, and another television performance.

Several British officials, and the officer commanding the group, have referred to the place where they were seized as being "clearly within Iraq's territorial waters", but in fact there is no treaty or agreement over the territoriality of this part of the Persian Gulf, which can only be resolved between Iran and Iraq themselves. They have agreed on the border in the Shatt al-Arab waterway, but not beyond that. It would therefore make sense to carry out searches as suspect ships enter the Shatt. The Royal Navy has no UN mandate to search vessels entering Iranian ports.

Some good may come from all this, as the Iranians clearly hope. Agreement must urgently be reached on what Iran's territorial waters are. Iran has legitimate interests in the region and should be brought into the picture more fully than the White House likes. The Royal Navy must now realise that HMS Cornwall, built as a deep-water sub-hunter, is unsuitable for its present purpose if it cannot even get within eight miles of the Iranian coast because of the shallows and mud flats. For its only helicopter to have run low on fuel is a further sign of lack of preparedness. Sailors should be properly trained about what to do in the event of capture, just as our ground forces are.

A few people do not emerge well. The former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, referred to "Iran and the rest of the Arab world" (Iran is not Arab), and told the BBC that the service personnel had been captured "in our waters", not "Iraqi waters", a phrase that seems to confirm Iran's fears about British intentions.

I wouldn't wish what happened to those Marines on anyone. But the Iranian government will be as aware as anybody that the West's record on the treatment of prisoners is poor. A propaganda war is being fought, and many in the West fail to realise how different the world looks from the Middle East. As long as our ally has a Guantanamo, for example, in its own back yard, it is a war we are unlikely to win.

Roger Cooper, a Persian scholar, spent five years in Evin prison, Tehran. He has frequently lectured to the British military on surviving captivity

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