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The return of the 15 British captives was soured yesterday when four troops — two of them women — were killed in Iraq by a massive roadside bomb.

Tony Blair said that elements in Iran were masterminding the terrorism in Iraq, and avoided thanking President Ahmadinejad for the “gift” of sending them home.

Last night the Bush Administration accused Iran of using hostage diplomacy to boost its status.

The Ministry of Defence began the painful process yesterday of examining a catalogue of failures that led to the capture and humiliation by Iran of the 15 British Marines and sailors.

The Times understands that appeals for more firepower to protect Britain’s UN-mandated patrols in the Gulf were repeatedly turned down by Whitehall.

Other failings identified include poor intelligence, inadequate training and sloppy tactical procedures, according to naval sources.

The 14 men and one woman were reunited with their families in emotional scenes at the Royal Marines base in Chivenor, Devon.

Mr Blair made clear, though, that Britain’s problems with Iran and in Iraq were far from over.

One revelation likely to rile Tehran came from former captive Captain Chris Air, of the Royal Marines, who admitted in a Sky News interview before his abduction that one of his duties was “to gather int [intelligence]” on Iranian activity in the area.

The Prime Minister said that the international community must remain steadfast in opposing moves by Iran to develop nuclear weapons and focus on the “sober and ugly reality” of Iranian support for terrorists operating in Iraq.

“The general picture . . . is that there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in Iraq and I repeat that our forces are there specifically at the request of the Iraqi Government and with the full authority of the United Nations,” Mr Blair said.

The MoD began debriefing the former captives, examining the circumstances that led to their capture and drawing lessons from the experience.

In particular, the boarding party from HMS Cornwall were too poorly armed to defend themselves against more powerful Iranian vessels. The mother ship was too far to offer assistance and its Lynx helicopter, which had earlier provided air cover, had returned to the frigate when the attack took place.

According to reports last night, Royal Naval boarding operations in the Persian Gulf had been suspended pending an official investigation into the capture.

Intelligence failures are also being blamed for the incident. British troops in southern Iraq had been warned of the dangers of being taken hostage, after Iran openly threatened to capture American or British soldiers. They had been authorised to use “maximum force” to protect themselves.

And yet, on the eve of a UN Security Council vote on a British resolution to impose sanctions against Iran, no warning was given to the boarding party about the dangers to which they were being exposed.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, attacked armchair admirals critical of the Royal Navy’s operations.“I think we ought to be very careful about commenting from the comparative comfort of wherever we are, when we are not out there on operations, about decisions that operational commanders and other people make,” he told Sky News.

The Conservatives said that they would be pressing for answers. Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said that it was important to know how the incident was allowed to take place and how to avoid it happening again.

They wanted answers to why the 15 personnel were held so far from HMS Cornwall, why the ship’s radar did not detect their Iranian captors, why the Lynx helicopter did not stay with them, whether the Navy needed smaller vessels able to operate in shallow waters and whether protection should be strengthened.

Sean McCormack, a US State Department spokesman, said that the taking of hostages was part of a Iranian pattern going back to the seizure of 52 Americans in 1979 and includes a 2004 incident when Iran captured and held another group of British soldiers. “This is clearly a regime that, after several decades, continues to view hostage-taking as a tool of its international diplomacy.”

The four British soldiers who died in Basra yesterday were in a heavily armoured vehicle that was destroyed by a roadside bomb as it returned from a “routine” operation to seize a rebel arms cache. The two women killed were from the Intelligence Corps and the Royal Army Medical Corps. The male soldiers were from the Royal Army Medical corps and 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. Their Kuwaiti interpreter was killed with them. in Basra.

It was the deadliest attack on British troops in months, and came on a day when almost 20 coalition and Iraqi soldiers died in attacks across Iraq.

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