But we still get to wear the white hat, right?

Even though those evil doers treated their hostages a little better than we treated ours?

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- An Iranian diplomat freed two months after being abducted in Iraq accused the CIA of torturing him during his detention, state television reported Saturday. The United States immediately denied any involvement in the Iranian's disappearance or release.

Jalal Sharafi, who was freed on Tuesday, said the CIA questioned him about Iran's relations with Iraq and assistance to various Iraqi groups, according to state television.

"Once they heard my response that Iran merely has official relations with the Iraqi government and officials, they intensified tortures and tortured me through different methods days and nights," he said.

Sharafi's comments came a day after 15 British sailors released by Iran said they had been subject to psychological pressure and coercion in captivity. The sailors were captured in the Persian Gulf on March 23 for allegedly entering Iranian waters and released Wednesday.

And what has been the message imparted by these events?

WASHINGTON - If the administration of US President George W Bush is paying attention, the drama over the 15 British sailors and marines, whose release by Iran after 12 days of detention was announced in Tehran on Wednesday, was designed to convey two key messages, according to experts in Washington.

First, the initial capture of the Britons by Revolutionary Guards near the entry to the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway was meant to demonstrate that, despite its conventional military weakness and diplomatic isolation, Iran retains the ability to strike at Western interests when it feels sufficiently provoked.

Second, when Western powers engage Iran with respect and as an equal, they are more likely to get what they want than when they take a confrontational path designed to bully or humiliate the regime.

Neither message is likely to be well received either at the White House or among the neo-conservative and other right-wing pundits who have tried hard to depict the incident as the latest sign of Islamic or Persian barbarism. Properly understood, however, the messages could form the basis of a new approach capable of yielding still greater results, according to Juan Cole, a regional expert at the University of Michigan.

And you know those 5 Iranian diplomats being held by us? They weren't the droids we sought...

US soldiers who captured five Iranians in the Iraq's northern city of Irbil three months ago were hoping to seize commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a senior Kurdish leader has said.

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region government, said senior Guards leaders had been visiting Kurdish officials at the time of the January raid.

The five Iranian diplomats who were arrested in the raid on a house in Irbil were all innocent of US charges that they were helping co-ordinate attacks against US and Iraqi forces, Barzani told Dubai-based Al-Arabiyah television in remarks broadcast on Friday.