Freed Britons Return Home As Calls for Probe Intensify

The ordeal has prompted widespread calls in the news media and among military analysts for an official investigation of the incident, to confirm where exactly the crew members were captured and if they had in fact strayed into Iranian waters.

Military analysts also question why the crew's small, lightly armed rubber boats were so far from their flagship, the HMS Cornwall, without adequate protection; why the Cornwall's radar did not detect Iranian military forces advancing on the crew's location and broadcast an alert; and why the ship's Lynx battle and reconnaissance helicopter did not provide air support for the group. Other analysts want to know why the service members were apprehended without a fight, and why they seemingly cooperated so willingly with their Iranian captors.

"There should be better procedures in place, which is why there probably should be an investigation," said Michael Williams, an analyst for Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. "But to be honest, I don't think they thought they would be picked up by anybody, because this was routine and they'd been doing it for ages without being caught."

He said most Britons probably will conclude that, being outgunned, the crew made the right choice in submitting to the Iranian captors rather than launching a firefight that could have mushroomed into a broader and more dangerous conflict.

Liam Fox, the opposition Conservative Party's spokesman on defense, told the BBC that some questions about the incident still need to be answered by the Blair government.

"The main question is what can we do differently to prevent something like this happening in the future," he said, while also raising the issue of "why there wasn't any patrol boat cover."

News reports here suggested that both the Iranians and the British began to soften their positions over the weekend with an exchange of diplomatic letters. Although the contents of the communications have not been released, there were reports that both sides expressed a desire to avoid similar disputes in the future. Analysts said this could signal the start of continuing dialogue involving Iran, Britain and Iraq over the rules of engagement in the disputed waters, and an effort to negotiate a clearer boundary between the two countries off their coasts.

The release of the British crew also coincided with the release this week in Iraq of an Iranian diplomat who had been detained for two months, and increased diplomatic activity surrounding five Iranians detained in January by U.S. troops in northern Iraq. But U.S., British and Iranian officials all said the events were not related to the release of the British detainees.

A sideshow to the event was what the British news media dubbed the "costume drama." The first televised pictures of the crew after their capture showed them in their Royal Navy uniforms. When they appeared Wednesday with Ahmadinejad, the 14 men were wearing dark suits and tie-less shirts -- a look Iranians say was cultivated after the 1979 Iranian revolution as an explicitly anti-Western fashion.

The Sun's front page ran a large picture of the group, some waving at the camera, above the headline, "I went to Iran and all I got was this lousy suit."

When they disembarked at Heathrow, the marines in the group wore desert camouflage uniforms, while the sailors wore crisp blue shirts and black pants.