Quote from dddooo:
Successful? What happened today was the opposite of success. Iran did not have any intention to kill or keep those 15 sailors, in the grand scheme of things they simply don't matter, they were used as pawns. Iran's objective was to intimidate and humiliate Great Britain, conduct a PR campaign and possibly extract political and other concessions. They obviously succeeded.
Getting hostages back is just a small part of the solution, punishing hostage takers and making sure that they won't do it again next time as the price to pay is too high is far more important. Not only the UK has completely failed in this respect, not only did it not show rogue regimes that messing with the queen is hazardous, it was instead publicly humiliated, disgraced and shown to be a paper tiger. It's now clear to the entire world that there is no downside to kidnapping British citizens, there is no political, economic or military price to pay but the rewards may be quite substantial.
But you're right of course, the US has never handled a similar situation any better.