"Improbable Easter Bunny" Indeed

John Bolton has a good analysis Iran's latest victory. Excerpt:

Quite possibly, the Iranians were divided internally and may well have stumbled into success at the end. This has already inspired the media's commentariat to conclude that the Foreign Office's "softly softly" approach worked. The Captain Ahabs of British and US diplomacy, obsessed by their search for Iranian "moderates", those great white whales, are proclaiming yet another "moderate" victory in this outcome. Surely, the "moderates" prevailed; how else to explain the hostages' release?

Indisputably the winners in Iran were the hardliners. It was Mr Ahmadi-Nejad who stood in the international spotlight for hours on end, who awarded medals to the Revolutionary Guards who captured the hostages, who announced the hostages' release and accepted their thanks. Even if the moderates concurred in the outcome, divergent motives can lead to the same conclusion. The question is, who increased relative to others in the Iranian calculus of power? The evidence unmistakably points to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. If strengthening his hand within the Tehran leadership amounts to success for British diplomacy and Iranian moderates, one hesitates to ask what would constitute failure.