Britain Hails Iranian Release of British Sailors

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• MARGARET WARNER:

  Like much that goes on in Iran's ruling circles, the decision to release the British sailors and marines came as a surprise and something of a mystery. To help decode what happened and why, we turn to: Trita Parsi, a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of "Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the United States." He's a citizen of both Iran and Sweden.

  And William Samii, a regional analyst for the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded non-profit research and development organization. He's a U.S. citizen but spent part of his childhood in Iran.

  Welcome, gentlemen.

  So, Bill Samii, what's behind this? Why the turnaround on the part of the Iranian government?

  WILLIAM SAMII, Center for Naval Analyses: Well, I think the turnaround, you can almost see the stages that took place, when initially you had military officials coming out with very strident statements about what happened. You had a disparity of diplomats around the world, Iranian diplomats, saying that a trial might take place soon.

  And then, over the weekend, you saw the Supreme National Security Council take the lead on the issue, which suggests to me that the Iranian government recognized that perhaps this issue is in danger of escalating into something unmanageable. "We need to get control of it and tone down the rhetoric and move on."

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Is that how you see it, Trita Parsi? And who do you think made the decision?

  TRITA PARSI, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies: I think there's a lot of truth there, but I also think there's another side of the picture, in the sense that initially the British government pursued quiet diplomacy, and then suddenly it started making rather strong statements publicly, increased the pressure, went to the Security Council, but then didn't manage to get what it wanted from the Security Council or from Europe.

  And that, I think, caused this issue to become much more complicated, because the Iranians are very, very eager to make sure that the outside world understands that they do not respond to pressure.

  Then the British changed their tone, and that's when you also see how Dr. Larijani started to send out a different message. And at this point, I think I would agree with Bill, in a sense that both sides kind of figured out that they basically got whatever they could get out of this. If this went on much longer, it would only be a game of seeing who can lose the most.