They're free, but Britain has been humiliated
The Telegraph's take:

Relief at the freeing of the British sailors and Marines in Iran is tempered with dismay at the humiliation to which they and the country they serve have been subjected.

The 14 men and one woman are due to return to Britain today, in time to be reunited with their families for Easter, a point not lost on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he announced their release.

The Government will congratulate itself on securing their liberation within the relatively short period - given the complexities of dealing with the various power centres in Iran - of 12 days. It will also be pleased that they are physically unharmed, though we do not yet know the psychological pressures they may have been put under. An initial high-risk policy of taking the abduction to the United Nations Security Council was replaced by low-key diplomacy, in which the dispatch to Teheran of Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser and Britain's ambassador-designate to Washington, seems to have been crucial.

The announcement of the captives' release followed his meeting on Tuesday night with Ali Larijani, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. And their freeing has taken place without the Government's having to apologise for an incident, the alleged straying into Iranian waters, that it has formally denied.

Yet the satisfaction of a diplomatic challenge eventually handled with skill is soured by the string of psychological humiliations that Britain has suffered.

First, there is the apparent incompetence of the Royal Navy in providing insufficient protection to lightly armed inflatables, at a time when relations between Iran and the West were particularly volatile following the imposition of UN sanctions. Second, the seized personnel lost no time in admitting to having trespassed and in apologising for their mistake. The old military practice of giving name, rank and number, and no more, has obviously been abandoned.

Third, the dénouement of this crisis showed Mr Ahmadinejad in the most favourable of lights, whether in "pardoning" the 15, pleading on their behalf with Mr Blair, admonishing this country for separating a mother, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, from her child, or shaking hands and chatting with the newly besuited Servicemen after his press conference.

The Iranian president has rightly been demonised in the West for his call for Israel's destruction and his pursuit of a nuclear weapons programme in defiance of the UN. Yet yesterday he was able to adopt the moral high ground, admonishing the Government while treating graciously those who had been acting on its behalf at the head of the Gulf.

This bodes badly for the West's relations with Teheran over a number of acutely difficult problems during the coming months: its defiance of UN sanctions imposed because of a refusal to halt uranium enrichment; its heightened meddling in Iraq; and its continued support for terrorist movements - Hizbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and elements of Fatah - vowed to Israel's destruction. During the recent crisis, Iran has yielded not a jot on any of these matters. Rather, the approval it has enjoyed on the Islamic "street" for humiliating an old enemy is likely to make it even more intransigent.

Labour has invested much diplomatic capital in trying to engage revolutionary Iran. But the seizure of the sailors and Marines has enabled Teheran to paint it back into a corner of close association with the "Great Satan", America, and to reawaken the Iranian public's historic suspicion of British designs.

No one would pretend that it is easy to deal with a nation that, since 1979, has shown itself prepared to treat norms of diplomatic behaviour with contempt. However, the steps that led to the seizure of the 15 on March 23 must be thoroughly investigated.

It appears that the Royal Navy has a lot to answer for.

The Sun's:

THANK goodness they are free at last.

It is a huge relief to see an end to the Iran captives crisis, which worsened the longer it went on.

But the sight of the illegally-detained British forces thanking Iranian tyrants for their freedom will sicken the nation.

Smirking President Ahmadinejad milked the humiliating moment for all it was worth.

The ratings were paraded in cheap new suits and had to grovel in public for his blessing. Their 13-day ordeal should soon be over.

But nobody emerges from this crisis with credit.

The Royal Navy failed to protect the patrol — or spot boatloads of heavily-armed Republican Guards racing to ambush it.

Britain’s official response was at times uncertain and, in the case of Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, downright embarrassing.

The UN emerged in its true colours — divided and ineffectual.

The real villains are the Iranians who grabbed a non-aggressive British crew acting legally under a UN mandate.

At no time did the British personnel stray out of the area they were supposed to be in.

Yet the mullahs forced terrified mum Faye Turney and her shipmates to “confess” they were in Iranian waters — and to apologise.

Nobody knows the pressures they faced, but the sight of British servicemen — apparently relaxed and unharmed — criticising their own Government was less than edifying.

In the end, Iran got what it wanted. It probed the responses of the civilised world at a moment of international tension.

It found neither Britain nor its allies have the clout or confidence to take on a fanatical regime that today represents the biggest threat to world peace.

Tony Blair insists there have been “no negotiations”.

But who will be surprised if half a dozen Iranian insurgents are quietly set free in a few months time?

Those are questions for later.

Today, let’s be joyful that our people are coming home at last.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,31-2007150643,00.html