Zaghari-Ratcliffe husband says Johnson should stay

The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran, has rejected calls for British foreign secretary Boris Johnson to resign, saying he feared that would further endanger her position.

In an open letter to Mr Johnson, Richard Ratcliffe said the Iranian authorities were preparing a new espionage case against his wife and were exploiting the gaffe by the politician to reinforce their case.

Mr Johnson told a committee that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was teaching journalists in Iran when she was detained.

“Your mistake in saying that Nazanin was in Iran training journalists – as opposed to the reality: that she was there on holiday with our daughter Gabriella, visiting her family – has raised the stakes for my wife,” Mr Ratcliffe wrote. “Your words are being used against her by Tehran ... as grounds for a new court case against her.

“I want you to solve this mess created in your name.”

The prospect of a new sentence, which would add five years prison time, has led to calls for Mr Johnson to go.

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, wrote yesterday that Mr Johnson was the figurehead of a crisis in the ministerial team. “The foreign secretary should have resigned, having apparently failed to read his brief and thereby possibly landed a British mother in Iran with a longer jail sentence.”

The prime minister’s office yesterday clarified that the charity worker was travelling privately when she was held.