UNITED NATIONS — Far from a victory for the dignity of quiet diplomacy, the release on Wednesday of 15 British sailors was merely one more chapter in a long history of similar incidents involving the Islamic Republic of Iran, which uses abductions and kidnappings as tools to force concessions from the West.

The technique of using hostages to create an international crisis that will lead to a resolution favorable to the mullahs was first launched soon after the 1979 revolution, with Americans held by “students.” Hezbollah — an organization created by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as part of the ayatollahs’ philosophy of exporting their model of the Islamic state to the Middle East and beyond — honed the method in the 1980s by using Western visitors to Lebanon.

Currently, Iranian-backed organizations throughout the region and beyond hold hostages whose value to the kidnappers depends on such factors as the captives’ nationality, the degree of press coverage the affair will receive in the West, the number of diplomatic interlocutors involved in release efforts, and the potential rewards to the capturers.

The kidnapping of a British reporter, Alan Johnston, raises more cries of injustice in European capitals than does the capture of the Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev, Ehud Goldwasser, and Gilad Shalit, who were combatants when abducted. Other Westerners in Iran, such as Stéphane Dudoignon of France and the American Robert Levinson, fall into another category.

But as in all kidnappings, the technique is the same. Just as in the case of Mr. Johnston, the Israeli soldiers are not afforded any of the privileges reserved for combatants under the Geneva Conventions, such as visits from neutral entities. But the price demanded by the kidnappers varies according to the value of the abductees.