Iran must face isolation if it fails to free our forces    • The
Observer,   • Jump to comments () There has been something
deeply repellent about the sight of Britain's 15 seized sailors
being paraded on Iranian television in a tacky propaganda
circus. There is simply no case, as Tehran has tried to argue,
that they entered Iranian territory. The stilted televised
'confessions' that Tehran has produced are an embarrassing
confection full of clumsy denunciations of UK foreign policy.
Tellingly their delivery by the British captives is framed in
the language of a Revolutionary Guards barracks and not the
Royal Navy wardroom. The Iranian claims also have been
undermined by the regime's own officials who have demonstrated
an almost comic uncertainty about where the British servicemen
were actually arrested, which has seen them shift the co-
ordinates when challenged in order to place the Britons where
Tehran would rather that they had been for the sake of this
affair - ie inside Iranian waters.  But once the fact