Hostage diplomacy
It was “standing room only” in Portcullis House in Westminster, when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe gave her first press conference after her return from Iran, said John Crace in The Guardian. For six years, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker, had been held on trumped-up charges of spying, a “silent figure” in a highly charged “political drama” between Tehran and London. But when, at last, she was able to speak herself, she first thanked her husband Richard, and raised the plight of others, such as the British-Iranian conservationist Morad Tahbaz, still imprisoned in Iran. Then she let rip: with “an icy, almost steely” fury, she asked why it had taken six years and “five foreign secretaries” to bring her home. That’s a good question, said Patrick Wintour in the same paper. The Foreign Secretary Liz Truss deserves credit for brokering this deal with Iran. But it’s dismaying that Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent years in jail when the Iranians had made the solution clear from the start: settlement of a £394m debt pertaining to 1,500 tanks which Iran paid for, but never received, after the 1979 revolution.
It wasn’t much of a solution, said Charlie Peters in The Spectator. Of course it’s wonderful to see this mother reunited with her husband and daughter, but it was a very bad idea to give the “horrific” Iranian regime the cash. It sets a terrible precedent. Although the Foreign Office claims the money is ring-fenced for “humanitarian causes”, there have been no guarantees given. Worse, now that our Government has folded to hostage diplomacy, what happens when another “despotic regime” baselessly accuses a Briton of “espionage”? Actually, Britain really should have settled this debt long ago, said former foreign secretary Jack Straw in The Daily Telegraph. We acknowledged it, but “placed one spurious legal hurdle after another in the way of a settlement”, and badly mishandled the case. In 2013, the Government invited three Iranian officials to London “to negotiate the repayment”. But when the Iranians arrived at Heathrow, they were arrested, detained and deported a few days later. “Direct action” by Iran followed – which was indefensible, but hardly surprising.
That was just one of many British errors, said Cathy Newman in The Independent: too often “minister and mandarins alike” have “hindered rather than helped”. Worst of all was when Boris Johnson, as foreign secretary, failed to read his brief and “blurted out” that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “training journalists” – a mistake which may have delayed her release “by years”. The true heroes of this story are Richard Ratcliffe and the family of Nazanin’s fellow captive Anoosheh Ashoori, who was released along with her. Ignoring Foreign Office advice to keep quiet for fear of antagonising the Iranians, and to leave it to the diplomats, they told their story publicly and launched petitions. They were vindicated, and their “dogged, lonely campaigns inspired us all”.