Iran has announced that they are releasing the fifteen British sailors which they have held since March 23, as an "Easter present" to the British people. Even though Iran continue to maintain that they "invaded" Iranian waters, the fifteen have been released.

About bloody time, is all that I can say. Although it has always been inevitable that they were going to have to return them eventually, and releasing them now as a "gift" is probably a ploy to save face.

What this incident has shown is that Margaret Beckett is pretty useless as Foreign Secretary, and that the UN is absolutely toothless. And that Britain's strength on the world stage is markedly less than it was, and probably less than it should be. Despite ignoring many domestic problems to play the world statesman, Blair doesn't seem to have achieved much, if anything.

The Telegraph has a video of the announcement of the sailor's release here.

The Times also has an interesting article on Tehran's bloggers, who are "deeply critical of the way that Tehran is handling the crisis over the captured Britons" and "in stark contrast to those of hardline students shown protesting violently outside the British Embassy and baying for the British “aggressors” to be executed for spying."

It also includes on comment from one blogger, Mr. Behi, who says: “This [Iranian] administration is not very rational. Don’t poke it like this” to the West, and to his own government: “These guys who are surrounding us are not that rational either. Do not poke them like this”. Maybe this is something we should all take note of.

Sources: BBC, The Times - article 1, article 2, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent