Before I forget, this one's worth mentioning. Those devious Persians, as it turns out, are not quite so devious after all. That's if the privately-expressed opinion of Ministry of Defence briefing papers are anything to go by. As The Times reported on 17 April:

Report reveals Iran seized British sailors in disputed waters

Fifteen British sailors and Marines were seized by Iran in internationally disputed waters and not in Iraq’s maritime territory as Parliament was told, according to new official documents released to The Times.

The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran’s territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal. ...

Newly released Ministry of Defence documents state that:

— The arrests took place in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi;

— The coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was;

— The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ coastal protection vessels were crossing this invisible line at a rate of three times a week; It was the British who apparently raised their weapons first before the Iranian gunboats came alongside ...

Iran always claimed that it had arrested the Britons for violating its territorial integrity.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, repeatedly told the Commons that the personnel were seized in Iraqi waters.

The MoD, in a televised briefing by Vice-Admiral Charles Style, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, produced a map showing a line in the sea called “Iraq/Iran Territorial Water Boundary”. A location was given for the capture of the Britons inside what the chart said were “Iraq territorial waters”. But the newly released top-level internal briefing accepts that no such border exists.

Rather embarrassing to those elements of the press - which is practically all of it - that went along with the official line.

Equally intriguing is the question of when The Times got hold of these documents - given that they were buried in its pages around a year after the story broke (and subsequently ignored by most of the rest of the press). There is a compelling precedent for the press deliberately sitting on official documents at a time when "it wouldn't do to mention that particular fact", in Orwell's words - as Nick Davies recalls in Flat Earth News, during the Falklands War Times editorial staff deliberately suppressed internal government documents casting doubt on its public line over the status of the Falklands islands. Could history be repeating itself? I wouldn't be at all surprised.