Iran releases the "hostages". This is good news for a few reasons.
One, Britain gets its people back which is always good. Two, it defuses the "Iran is next" wing of the neocon right. And Three, it shows that Iran is a much more stable, much more diverse, and much more perhaps democratic country than many in the U.S. might have thought. Clearly there are competing interests in Iran, and various parties who feel they have something to gain and something to lose from the situation in Iraq, and Iran's place in the world. That means that there is room for negotiation and diplomacy.
My theory has always been that the reason Iraq is such a mess, is that Saddam's rule was so brutal, and our initial invasion was such a decisive victory for our troops, that it wiped out any opportunity for these sorts of interest groups to survive. Instead of an educated civil servant class, we get the insurgents who have nothing to lose and therefore no reason to negotiate a lasting peace.
