The British marine hostage saga is a debacle of the first order – a grim parable of the degraded state to which Britain has now descended and an alarming portent for the free world in its fight to survive. Relief at the safe return of the 15 sailors, and the fact that we must always bear in mind that none of us knows how we would ourselves behave in such circumstances, cannot nevertheless mitigate the sickening realisation that the hostage fiasco is another terrible milestone in the west’s current suicidal trajectory of decadence and moral collapse.

First the sailors allowed themselves to be taken without a fight. Then they abased themselves before the genocidal Iranian regime and – notwithstanding the duress we now know they were under – behaved subsequently with an astounding absence of decorum and propriety which set the seal on Britain’s humiliation as a senile and toothless lion. Now we learn that they are to even be allowed to tell their story in the media, with the express permission of a defence high command which, in granting such exemption from the normal rules, grotesquely linked the behaviour of these 15 grovelling sailors to British heroes who were in receipt of the Victoria Cross.

Britain’s shame has been Iran’s gain. At a time of rising tension over the mortal threat posed by Iran to the free world, Britain handed it a victory which has strengthened it and made it even more of a threat. Britain’s strategic incompetence was matched by Iran’s flawless manipulation. Britain was the target of a deliberate act of war. What did it do, this country of Drake and Nelson and Churchill? It allowed its sailors to be captured without any attempt at self-defence and then further allowed itself to be multiply humiliated.

Iran kidnapped 15 British sailors in an open breach of international law. What consequences has it suffered? None. On the contrary, it has played Britain like a fish on the end of a line. We don’t yet know the terms of the deal that was undoubtedly struck, but the abasement of Britain has allowed Iran to tweak our noses. In Teheran, a top Iranian official has said Britain sent it a secret letter that was a condition for the captives’ release and in which it apologised for entering Iranian waters and promised never to do it again. The Foreign Office flatly denies this. Who knows? Who will believe a British government that has so comprehensively lost the plot?

From the start, it was clear that its priorities were completely wrong. Tony Blair said his overriding concern was the welfare of the hostages. Bad mistake. His overriding concern should have been to ensure that his country delivered the appropriate response to an act of war, to discourage the aggressor who so menaces the entire free world from ever striking again. The appropriate response was to fight back. But Britain had previously taken a decision not to strike back at Iran. Its rules of military engagement didn’t allow it because its overriding priority was ‘not to escalate’ hostilities. In other words, the British strategy towards Iran, laid down at the highest level, was appeasement. Iran has been at war with the west for almost thirty years, but we have decided to ignore it. Iran has been a major factor behind the carnage in Iraq, but we have decided to ignore it. And with the grimmest possible timing, the fact that Iran is in a state of war with us — a fact which we refuse to acknowledge — demonstrated itself almost simultaneously with the release of the hostages when four British soldiers were blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb almost certainly supplied by Iran.

If the strategy is fundamentally one of cravenness in the face of war, the behaviour of the sailors themselves poses some urgent questions about the way military recruits are trained. These sailors appear to have been but wholly unprepared for war and wholly ignorant of the way in which they should behave when captured. Undoubtedly, they were subjected to terrifying experiences. But for heaven’s sake, they are Britain’s fighting forces! You would scarcely believe, to hear them justify their behaviour by recounting how frightening the whole thing was, that these individuals were members of the Royal Navy.

The statement they made when they were released was deeply troubling. It revealed that all they wanted to do was get home. As one of them said:

We were interrogated most nights, and presented with two options. If we admitted we had strayed, we would be on a plane back to the UK soon. If we didn’t we faced up to seven years in prison. We all at one time or another made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information… We were made to line up to meet the president, one at a time. My advice to everyone was not to mess this up now - we all wanted to get home.

In addition to being bound by rules of engagement for a country on its knees, these Royal Marines seems to have absolutely no idea of what it means to be in a war. This is surely the Diana-fication of the British military. And just look at how they behaved. It is dismaying enough that, as we now learn, the rules no longer require the British military merely to give their name rank and number when captured, unless they are actually prisoners of war, but allow them explicitly to tell their captors what they want to hear provided they give away no secrets or betray their colleagues. But these sailors went much further. In their desperation to get home – their overriding objective, rather than the defence of their country — they abased themselves before the Iranians, falsely ‘confessing’ to having trespassed into Iranian waters, thanking Ahmadinejad and asking for his forgiveness. When they were prepared for release, they fooled about in front of the video cameras, dressed in what we now learn were the off-duty suits of the Revolutionary Guard instead of their Naval uniforms to drive home the propaganda gift they had given the Iranians.

Most astounding of all, they arrived home clutching the goodie bags of sweets, CDs, books and trinkets they had been given to cement the grotesque impression of Iranian benevolence, for all the world as if returning from a children’s party. Why didn’t they leave these ‘gifts’ behind? Why didn’t they leave them on the plane? Was there simply no-one in the Royal Navy or MoD who thought that maybe it might not be an entirely wonderful idea for servicemen released from captivity to retain and flourish ‘gifts’ from their manipulative captors, thus actively assisting the propaganda coup? Is there simply no-one with any sense at all left in the British defence establishment?

And now, to cap it all, they are actually selling their stories, as has been observed as if they were contestants in a reality TV show instead of the instruments of a military debacle and national humiliation. The fact that they have been allowed to do this is in itself astounding. The reason given by the top brass, which in detailing exceptions from the rules preventing such revelations by naval personnel actually lumped together these craven sailors with recipients of the Victoria Cross, was simply despicable.

But who can be surprised, when the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, said the way the patrol crew had dealt with their captivity was a credit to the UK.

‘I think they acted with considerable dignity and a lot of courage,’ he said. ‘They appear to have played it by the rules. They don’t appear to have put themselves into danger [or] others into danger … they don’t appear to have given anything away.’

On the contrary — by handing Iran such a stunning propaganda and tactical advantage, they have put us all in greater danger. We appear to have a Diana-fied First Sea Lord who also hasn’t got a clue about what war involves. Other British military types who still have some idea of what war and military discipline involve have been expressing their horror at this fiasco, as well they might. And across the Atlantic, the Americans – whose own conduct over the years towards Iran has hardly been a model of resolve — have had their illusions about Tony Blair, along with their quasi-mythological belief in the British stiff upper lip, naval prowess, military derring-do and all the rest of it, shredded now in the most brutal fashion. The damage that has been done to Britain’s reputation in US circles is incalculable. However, if it is true that Bush came to Blair’s aid by releasing an important Iranian prisoner who was taken in Iraq and is shaping up to release five more, it is not just Britain which is on the way to surrender but the leader of the free world.

The Iranians now know from this debacle that they can make trouble for the west with impunity. They can take hostages, smuggle arms into Iraq, blow up British soldiers and even go nuclear — and no-one will do a damn thing to stop it.

This affair has strengthened Iran in its nuclear stand-off. It has strengthened its grip over its own subjected people who have looked to the west to help them rid their country of this terrible regime. It has strengthened its appeal to the Muslim and Arab masses who are already worked up to a state of murderous frenzy against the west. It has given them the message that the west is theirs for the taking.

What a disaster.