It was a weirdly effective performance. Invoking the "anniversary of the death of Jesus Christ" and the spirit of forgiveness, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran's mercurial president, ended a characteristically prolix press conference yesterday with a coup de theatre: freeing the 15 British sailors and marines seized by Revolutionary Guards in the northern Gulf 13 days ago. This "gift" to the British people has damped down a highly combustible situation - and Iran will be looking to claim as much of the credit as it can.

Britain will be mightily relieved at the return of the servicemen (and one woman). But the government will face some hard questioning: about how this incident could be allowed to happen, with pitifully armed patrols operating in indefensible dinghies in arguably the most dangerous waters in the world; about the circumstances in which the sailors confessed on Iranian television that they had indeed violated Iran's territorial waters; about the humiliating propaganda of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's long goodbye, televised to the world, to the freed and, on the face of it, effusively grateful servicemen.