A six-year ordeal for the British-Iranian prisoners Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori has finally ended after they were released by Iran and freed to return home to be reunited with their families.
A third dual national accused of spying, the businessman and wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz, was freed from prison on furlough, but his family said he feels abandoned in Iran by the British government.
News of the two detainees’ release, the subject of months-long behind-the-scenes diplomacy and payment of a £400m debt, was formally announced by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, and Ashoori, 67, were released from the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps just before noon UK time at Tehran international airport before being flown to Oman and then on to an RAF base, where they are to be greeted by their relatives and Truss.
Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, standing beside their smiling seven-year-old daughter, Gabriella, said he was looking forward to becoming a normal family again. His wife’s greatest ambition after a period of recuperation was to sit down on the sofa, make a cup of tea and just be in the living room together, he said, adding: “Homecoming is a journey and not an arrival.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 in Tehran after working as a charity project manager. Ashoori, a retired civil engineer, was in prison for almost five years, while Tahbaz has been held for four. All three denied charges of spying.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Truss said their release was “the result of years of tenacious British diplomacy”. The UK finally struck the deal after the paying a decades-old debt via a Swiss humanitarian channel. Britain says it has guarantees that the money will be used only for food and medical purposes.
It's been 6 long years - and I can't believe I can FINALLY share this photo.
— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) March 16, 2022
Nazanin is now in the air flying away from 6 years of hell in Iran.
My heart goes out to Gabriella and Richard, as her long journey back home to them gets closer by the minute.#NazaninIsFree ❤️ pic.twitter.com/BzEEBP840C
In a dramatic day of tense emotions, Iranian state media reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori had been handed over to a British team on Wednesday but a two-hour delay at Tehran’s airport suggested a last-minute hitch, largely over the fate of Tahbaz.
Iran is treating Tabhaz, 66, as an American citizen, even though he was born in Hammersmith, west London, and holds US, UK and Iranian citizenship. Disagreements over his fate proved an obstacle to a deal in the past.
The Tahbaz family told the Guardian: “We have been let down and betrayed by the British government. He was the only one of the three with a British birth certificate, and he has been left behind. We were not told about this arrangement except in a short phone call with the foreign secretary, when it was too late to do anything about it. The British now just say he is an American problem.”
Truss said the UK would “continue to push with partners” to secure Tahbaz’s “long overdue” release home. She praised the resolve and courage shown by the detainees and their families.
The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, criticised Boris Johnson as he praised Truss, telling MPs: “She showed more skills in diplomacy than her bungling boss.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, Tulip Sidiq, welcomed her home. “Can I say to Nazanin: welcome home after six long years. And can I say to Gabriella: this time mummy is really coming home.” Paying tribute to Richard Ratcliffe, who undertook a 21-day hunger strike last year, she said: “He has really set the bar high for husbands.”
The former prime minister David Cameron, who was in No 10 when Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran, told Channel 4 News her release was “a piece of good news that we’ve all been waiting to hear for so long”.
The UK is understood to have agreed to pay £393.8m owed to Iran after it cancelled an order of Chieftain tanks following the overthrow of the Shah in the revolution of 1979. The details of the deal were hammered out in secret talks in February largely in Oman between a British Foreign Office team and the Iranians. With trust between the two countries at a low point, every aspect of the deal, including its choreography, had to be agreed.
The UK acknowledged the Iranian claim on the money was legitimate but payment was held up over Britain’s ability to make it without breaching US sanctions, leading to the money being frozen by the US. The UK had examined many times whether the payment could be made through a humanitarian channel in Switzerland or even in the form of medicines.
It was not clear to what extent the US had endorsed the British bilateral deal, but a US Congressman, Jim Himes, claimed Truss may have gone back on assurances that she had given to him personally that Tahbaz would be included.
Truss hinted that the UK was negotiating solely on behalf of its own three detainees, and not part of a wider package involving American detainees. She told the BBC: “I have to act in the UK national interest. I have to protect British citizens, and my priority is returning our detainees.”
It is also too early to say if the deal will mark a new diplomatic era between the UK and Iran, and that may yet depend on whether Iran and the west can agree terms for the US and Iran to come back into compliance with the original 2015 nuclear deal – something that is likely to be decided in the next fortnight.
The British deal will put pressure on other countries with dual nationals held in jail. The UK is not the only signatory to the joint comprehensive plan of action – as the 2015 nuclear deal is known – to have detainees held in Iran.
The four Americans most frequently mentioned as US priorities for release are Tahbaz, Siamak Namazi, Baquer Namazi and Emad Sharqi. The US special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, has never explicitly made an agreement to lift US sanctions and rejoin the nuclear deal contingent on the release of US hostages, but has said he cannot conceive of circumstances in which the sanctions would be lifted and the US detainees remained in an Iranian jail.
The French priority for release is the Franco-Iranian anthropologist and dual national Fariba Adelkhah, detained since June 2019. She was given a five-year jail sentence in 2020, allowed out with an electronic bracelet in October 2020, then re-imprisoned in January 2021.
Germany is seeking the release of Nahid Taghavi, a German-Iranian dual national arrested in October 2020 by Iranian intelligence and sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison. Mariam Claren, her daughter, said: “My question as a German citizen is, if there is a deal and you’re going to sign it and if the US hostages are going to be freed, what is your answer for us other families – are you going to leave our family members behind?”
