FINALLY. After nearly six years of Iranian detention, countless failed attempts and dashed hopes, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been released. Finally, after four years, Anoosheh Ashoori has also been freed.
Finally, the UK government has paid the £400 million debt it has owed to Iran dating back to 1979. Finally, the shameful hostage-taking of two British citizens by Iran as leverage for said debt has ended. Hopefully, Morad Tahbaz, who the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed yesterday has been released from prison, will also soon return home.
For now, a mother has now been reunited with her family, has got to hold her seven-year-old daughter. Retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, who was arrested while visiting his mother in Tehran in 2017, has also been given his life back.
Whatever the reason – and one could be cynical and wonder if the need for new sources of oil in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine played a part – the renewed focus and energy the UK government has been showing towards this issue (as acknowledged by the Ratcliffe family lawyer yesterday) has to be welcomed.
Liz Truss deserves some credit here (not something I ever imagined I’d write). She has managed to do what her predecessors Philip Hammond, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab were not.
Johnson infamously made Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation worse when, either poorly briefed or too lazy to read his brief, he said she was teaching journalism in Iran when she was not; remarks then cited in an Iranian court as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime.”
Johnson’s role in possibly prolonging her imprisonment should have been more-than-adequate proof he was not up to any senior political post, never mind that of Prime Minister. And despite the complications of sanctions against the Iranian state, if it is a case that this situation could have been solved earlier by the paying off of a legitimate debt then this Tory government could have moved a lot quicker.
But let’s place the blame where it is most deserved. The real villains here are the Iranian theocrats who used human lives in so callous and inhumane a way.
To lose six years of your life for realpolitik is a barbaric penalty. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has missed her daughter growing up. That’s a theft that cannot be restored. Hopefully she will now have the peace and privacy to at least reclaim her life. The same goes for Anoosheh Ashoori.
But this chapter of British-Iranian relations is not yet finished. The conservationist Morad Tahbaz may have been released on furlough, but he remains in Iran. Another British-Iranian, labour activist, Mehran Raoof is still, as far as we know, being held in prison by Iranian authorities. Good news on both of these fronts would be very welcome in the hours and days ahead.
For now, though, we can at least celebrate a small slice of good news in these dark days.
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