Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had UK passport returned, says MP

Hopes of release build amid reports Britain has now paid decades-old £400m debt to Iran

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian national held in Iran, has had her British passport returned, her MP, Tulip Siddiq, has said.

The Hampstead and Kilburn MP tweeted: “I am very pleased to say that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given her British passport back. She is still at her family home in Tehran. I also understand that there is a British negotiating team in Tehran right now. I will keep posting updates as I get them.”

There were reports that the UK government had paid a decades-old £400m debt to Iran, a move that could facilitate Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release from Tehran and that of a British-Iranian man, Anoosheh Ashoori.

There was no independent confirmation of the payment from the families of the two detainees, or from the UK Foreign Office.

It has been widely accepted, but not officially confirmed by either government, that the payment of the debt, a source of deep anger for Tehran, would lead to their release and that the two detainees have, in effect, been kept as state hostages to persuade the UK to release the cash.

Previous deals have collapsed, and the official government position for the past two years has been that the debt was owed by the UK, but that US economic sanctions have meant it was not possible to pay it to any Iranian government organisation.

Ashoori was sentenced to 10 years for spying and is held in Evin jail. He was arrested in Iran after flying there in 2017 to see his mother, and convicted in July 2019 of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 when she went to visit her parents, and has served a five-year jail sentence. She has been out on a tag in Tehran, staying at her parents’ home, and in April 2021 was sentenced to a further year in prison, but has not yet been called to jail. She could be required to return to prison at any time.

The British Foreign Office has refused to describe her as a state hostage, a decision that has infuriated Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family and her legal advisers, Redress.

Asked about reports that the debt had been paid, the Foreign Office said: “We continue to explore options to resolve this case and will not comment further as discussions are ongoing. We have long called for the release of unfairly detained British nationals in Iran. We don’t comment on speculation.”

Boris Johnson, when asked whether the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe could be imminent, said there were “quite delicate discussions gong on” in Tehran. He said: “It would not be sensible for me to comment until we have got a final result. I think that conversations are still going on.”

The Guardian later independently verified that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s British and Iranian passports had been returned to her on Sunday, and that Ashoori was expected to be part of any deal.

There were also reports that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori would be flown out of Tehran to Oman, a country that has often acted as a mediator in the Middle East and has strong links with the British government. Iranian sources said they were hoping for good news in the next days.

The payment of the debt would come as talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal reach a climax in Vienna. Moscow has introduced some last-minute demands delaying a deal, including a requirement that any trade between Iran and Moscow was not subject to sanctions imposed by Washington as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Iranian foreign minister was in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the Russian intervention and whether it could mean the near-complete nuclear deal could be signed off.

The release of the dual-nationals or the payment of the debt, if confirmed, would keep momentum behind the deal.

Rebecca Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law, said Tuesday’s developments were “one of the most positive steps in the six years she has been taken from us. It is very good there is a negotiating team out there at the moment.” She confirmed that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned on Monday to see the Islamic revolutionary guard corps.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, after talks with the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said US suggestions that Moscow was blocking efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal were untrue. A breakdown in the Iran nuclear talks could yet have an impact on the release of dual-national detainees.