In a move to confuse news agencies, the Syrian government has released five activists who took part in the Damascus Spring, all the while meeting with Iran’s messianic president.

Syrian authorities have released five pro-democracy activists, including two prominent former legislators, after they had served nearly four years of their five-year prison sentences.

Those released Wednesday – former legislators Mamoun Homsi and Riad Saif; Fawwaz Sello, Walid al-Bunni and Habib Issa – were part of a group of nine men arrested in 2001. They had been imprisoned for 45 months.

Three of the group were released earlier. Issa told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Aref Daililah, the one member of the group who remained in jail, was to be freed within 48 hours.

The pro-democracy activists who were arrested in a clampdown against what was known then as the “Spring of Damascus” group. The group, comprising democracy and human rights activists, gained prominence with their “political salons,” gatherings where Syrian intellectuals discussed reform in this hard-line Arab state.

They were convicted on charges of trying to change the constitution.

I read one news report that spoke hopefully of the release of several hundred other prisoners of conscience, and an ease of tensions with the United States over this latest announcement. To paraphrase, a return to the perception that Syria is a country Washington can do business with. Either the author has a very cynical view of American foreign policy, or truly doesn’t understand that the release of five activists cannot make up for the funding and support of militants, the repression of its own people, and the continued subordination of the Lebanese nation.

Small gestures are not going to stop the French-American drive to isolate and possibly even oust Assad and his regime. The problem lies within the government’s inherent makeup which allows it to detain and release at will. Whether an arrest or a release, these are all actions carried out on the whim of the government and not by independent processes of justice. That they can release these prisoners just as easily as they detain them speaks volumes about the troubling nature in which it works. This is why the U.S. will continue to push for fundamental change in the regime itself.