March 25, 2022
by Warren L. Nelson
After four years of imprisonment and two years of house arrest, the Islamic Republic suddenly released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe March 16 and let her fly home to an emotional reunion with her husband and daughter in Britain.
The Islamic Republic also freed Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, who had been arrested one year after Zaghari-Ratcliffe, now 43, and he flew back to Britain on the same Royal Air Force (RAF) jet as Zaghari-Ratcliffe. He is a retired civil engineer. He had been convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced to 12 years.
His wife said that the family had to scramble to borrow 27,000 pounds ($35,500) overnight for a fine imposed by Iran before it would free Ashoori. It then set up a crowdfunding website to cover that debt and raised enough money to repay the funds within just 12 hours.
A third prisoner, Morad Tahbaz, 66, who holds both British and American citizenship as well as Iranian citizenship, was freed from prison but not allowed to leave Iran. A wildlife conservationist, he and others were accused of using the cameras they set out in remote areas to monitor cheetahs in order to spy on Iran’s missile program. But Tahbaz was only on furlough for 48 hours. Then he was sent back to prison. After a global outcry, he was taken to a hotel. But a day later—on Now Ruz itself—he was put back in Evin Prison.
At the same time, Britain also transferred more than a half-billion dollars to an Iranian account to close out a debt that is more than four decades old. Iran said the payment was not linked to the prisoner release, though few believed that. Britain said the money was not simply given to Iran, but rather deposited in an account that Iran could draw on only to pay for “humanitarian goods” (food and pharmaceuticals), in order to stay in compliance with US sanctions.
A fourth Anglo-Iranian, Mehran Raoof, a labor rights activist went unmentioned and remains in Iran. He was arrested in October 202 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The two freed prisoners were flown by Oman from Tehran to Oman, where a RAF jet picked them up and flew them to a RAF base in Britain. The public and media were not admitted to the base as the pair were reunited with their families.
Tulip Siddiq, the member of parliament who represents the Ratcliffes, said Gabriella had asked her father if he was “pulling her leg” when he told Gabriella that mother was coming home. Siddiq said, “My heart just broke.” When Gabriella was assured her mother really was coming, Gabriella started playing the piano and singing.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, Gabriella, who will turn eight in a few weeks, was heard asking her father, “Is that mummy?” as her mother walked down the stairs from the RAF plane. Gabriella was 22 months old when her mother was arrested. Nazanin had taken her daughter to Tehran so her parents could see her. She was arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport as she was preparing to fly back to London.
Gabriella lived with her grandparents and visited her mother in prison until the parents decided she should return to London to start school. For the past year, since Nazanin was shifted to house arrest at her parents’ home, Gabriella has been able to talk with her mother daily over Skype.
Richard Ratcliffe’s sister, Rebecca, told the BBC the family had been taken to a Foreign Office guest house for a few days so they could reunite in privacy. “Gabriella slept in between Richard and Nazanin for the first time in six years, so a very special moment,” she said.
Before going to the RAF base to meet his wife, Richard told the BBC Gabriella had already picked out the toys she wanted to show her mother and that one of the first things he would do was brew his wife a cup of tea.
He said he was concerned at how untidy their London apartment was. Ratcliffe’s father described the home as in “appalling” condition. His mother said the apartment was packed with materials used in the “Free Nazanin” campaign, not to mention stacks of toys supporters had given Gabriella. “Maybe we should all be up there at the moment tidying,” she said.
After five days in a private family setting, the Ratcliffe couple gave a press conference on Now Ruz in the complex where Parliament is housed. Richard was very kind to the British government and thanked it profusely for bringing his wife home. Nazanin, however, was having none of that. “I do not really agree with him on that level,” she said, complaining that the Foreign Office had dragged its feet and never done much to help her until the last few months.
“I love you, Richard, respect what you believe, but I was told many, many times that: ‘Oh, we’re going to get you home.’ That never happened.”
“What happened now should have happened six years ago,” she said, noting that her return flight landed in Britain on the sixth anniversary of the day she flew from London to Tehran to visit her parents.
She also started a campaign calling for the world to demand that Tahbaz be put on a plane and allowed to go to London.
Nazanin spoke impeccable English, with a modest British accent—an accent some call a mid-Atlantic accent because it softens some English sounds that Americans have trouble understanding. She spoke strongly and was well-composed, showing no damage from six years of detention.
Richard said, “It’s been a long struggle. I’m immensely, immensely pleased and proud of my wife, and proud to have her home, proud that we start a new chapter and get to be a normal family again.” It said it was “nice to be retiring” from his campaigning.
Oman played a mediating role in the prisoner release, according to people with knowledge of the process.
The 400-million-pound debt was paid into an account at the Central Bank of Iran in Oman as Nazanin took off from Tehran, said people familiar with the financial side of the transaction. US sanctions prohibited sending the money directly to Iran while Oman will also be able to check that the money is disbursed only for humanitarian purposes, these people told The Wall Street Journal.
The prisoner release was secured through dozens of meetings over the years, according to a British official. Most recently, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss dispatched a negotiating team to Tehran in October and November last year. The team also had meetings in February and a final meeting in the Omani capital of Muscat finalized the actions on all three British nationals.
The compromise sending the funds to a third country and confining the funds to purchases of food and pharmaceuticals was apparently what broke the long impasse.
Given the constant efforts by Richard Ratcliffe on behalf of his wife, Nazanin became one of the best-known foreign prisoners in Iran. She was born in Tehran and moved to Britain in 2007 to study, and met her future husband in a class.
After her arrest in April 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly seeking to topple the Islamic Republic. Tehran’s prosecutor-general said she had worked to recruit people to spread propaganda against Iran through a British Broadcasting Corp. Persian online journalism course she ran. She denied the charges.
She had worked in an administrative role, not as a journalist, for BBC Media Action, a charity. At the time of her arrest, she worked as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the London-based charity arm of the news conglomerate Thomson Reuters, which has said her job didn’t involve training journalists. Furthermore, the charity said, it has no programs involving Iran.
Her five-year sentence was completed last April. She was then sentenced to another year for alleged propaganda activities, which her lawyer said was based on her supposedly attending a protest in London 12 years earlier and giving an interview to the BBC.
Ashouri was detained in 2017 during a trip to Tehran to visit his mother. In 2019, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for allegedly spying for Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, and for “acquiring illegitimate wealth.” Ashouri denied both charges.
The Ratcliffe family’s member of Parliament, Tulip Siddiq, wrote an article in The Guardian damning the Foreign Office. She said officials there insisted the family must remain silent, for talking about the case would make it hard on Nazanin. Siddiq said she was very uncertain what to do, but Richard insisted on a public campaign calling attention to his wife’s case. “Within three days of going public, Nazanin was allowed a visit from her [parents] and soon afterward was transferred out of solitary confinement,” Siddiq wrote.
She said she then supported Richard’s campaign—but the Foreign Office pressured her to talk him out of it. She said one MP working at the Foreign Office told her that every time she mentioned Nazanin’s name in Parliament added five years to Nazanin’s sentence.
A key issue has been whether there was any link between Nazanin’s captivity and a debt Britain owed Iran. The Shah bought 1,750 Chieftain tanks and paid for them all in advance. Britain had delivered only a few hundred when the revolution ousted the Shah and Britain canceled future deliveries.
It took years for Britain to acknowledge the debt, but then the two countries squabbled over the interest due. Eventually, a UK court ruled that Britain owed interest up until sanctions were imposed. Britain acknowledged the amount owed, but said it couldn’t make a payment while sanctions remained in place.
When Truss became foreign secretary last September, she ordered the Foreign Office to make a major effort to resolve the payment. She said that was done with the agreement that the funds would be turned over to the Bank of Oman, which would police the account to assure that Iran only paid for “humanitarian” goods from the account so as not to violate sanctions.
The Islamic Republic has told the Iranian public that it has full control over the funds and can spend the money on whatever it wishes. The different explanations are really a distinction without a difference. Under what Britain says, Iran can use the funds in Oman to import medicines while the Central Bank of Iran devotes funds previously reserved to buy medicines to procure weapons or whatever else it wishes.
Tehran has also denied repeatedly that there was any link between the freedom given Nazanin and Ashoori and the repayment of the debt. It has been very firm in insisting on that.
The amount of the debt that was repaid along with the accrued interest was 393.8 million pounds ($515.5 million).