After two weeks of hostage crisis fifteen sailors are back in British guard, celebrating the incident as a victory and quickly rejecting the ‘confessions’ as coerced that they falsely entered Iranian waters. However, the dispute from the Iranian challenge over the captives is clear that it was a ‘propaganda’ and ‘a show.’

The entire sailor affair once again brought into light the Iranian trademark to deal with the things: first, provoke an incident. Secondly, bluster it out to the maximum extent. Thirdly, create a good deal of concern, and finally, resolve it peacefully.

The Iranians have long been playing this cat and mouse game with the U.S. and British Navy in those waters and it’s not an accident that they chose to take captives now. However, Iran did not gain anything out of this recent move that was particularly aimed to hasten the release of the Iranian officials being kidnapped by US in Iraq.

This sudden release of the captives do not show the magnanimous act of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rather it shows that Iranian regime do not lack any move in its political chess expertise to get out of any precarious situation. This move was precision guided to strongly make the world realize that it’s better to turn to the diplomatic tables while tackling the big issue - Tehran’s nuclear program. The recent UN sanctions imposed on Iran is nothing but hog wash keeping in mind the fact that these sanctions have never worked to culminate any nuclear program.

However, successful resolution of the hostage affair illustrates that there is potential room for improvements while dealing the hard-liners inside the Iranian regime. This event has also been profitable as it demonstrates that there have been well-known rifts within Iran’s foreign policy establishment between hard-liners and pragmatists. The release of the sailors reveal that pragmatic officials are more concerned about Iran’s growing isolation and are also are getting the upper hand in the political split inside Iran.

But the big question is still in the air that what does this release say about the prospects of tensions between Iran and the West?

This question might remain in the air but it needs to be addressed that the heightened tensions between Iran and the west is the byproduct of Bush administration’s confrontational policies. And so much to the warmonger’s dismay that the peaceful finish to the hostage drama dashed their hopes of leveraging another crisis into the war. It is clear that Washington and London have reached the end of the rope and there is no way that Iran is going to give US any opportunity to drop any bomb on its so-called illegitimate nuclear facilities.