A British mother imprisoned in Iran is ‘much more hopeful’ she will be reunited with her daughter for Christmas after Boris Johnson visited the country to urge her release.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is ‘more upbeat’ after his diplomatic mission to convince the country to drop controversial spying charges against her, her husband said today.
Richard Ratcliffe said that ‘reading the tea leaves’ he still hoped she could return home to spend Christmas Day with him and their three year-old daughter Gabriella.
But a senior Iranian MP today poured cold water on hopes that a breakthrough in the case could be just around the corner – and said ‘spies’ should not be freed.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured with her daughter Gabriella before her arrest, is ‘more upbeat’ his diplomatic mission to convince the country to drop controversial spying charges against her, her husband Richard said today
Richard Ratcliffe (pictured with his wife and their young daughter Gabriella) said that ‘reading the tea leaves’ he still hoped she could return home to spend Christmas Day with him and their three year-old daughter
Naqavi Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission said: ‘One of the problems that we face in receiving European delegations is that they make irrational requests from the Iranian side.’
And he said that his commission would reject the request to free the mother-of-one if it was lodged with them.
The intervention, which was reported on Iranian state media today, is a sign of the clashes going on over the case in the Middle Eastern country.
The Foreign Secretary visited Tehran on Saturday to launch a fresh diplomatic push to try to free Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe after his gaffe to MPs threatened to land her with another five years in jail.
The British mother of one has spent over a year in jail on spying charges which she strongly denies, insisting instead that she was in the country to visit her parents.
But Mr Johnson incorrectly told MPs she was in Tehran to train journalists in a blunder seized upon by Iranian hardliners to hit her with fresh espionage charges.
The mother-of-one was hauled back to court and told she could face many more years in a cell if she was found guilty.
However, her court case was cancelled on Sunday after Mr Johnson visited the country and held talks with its leaders about the case.
And the authorities confirmed they are looking again at her case on ‘humanitarian grounds’ amid concerns that her physical and mental health have dramatically deteriorated since her imprisonment.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme today, her husband said he met the Foreign Secretary yesterday who was ‘cautious’ and ‘didn’t want to get my hopes up that it was all going to be done in the next three or four days’.
But he highlighted comments by Iran’s foreign ministry, saying it would raise the case with the judiciary ‘out of humanitarian concerns’.
And he pointed to the Tehran revolutionary court, which he said described reports of a new set of charges against his wife as a ‘mistake by Western media’.
Boris Johnson met with Iranian Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani at the weekend, as he made a fresh diplomatic push for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release
Boris Johnson and his diplomatic mission held talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as part of his efforts to try to secure the British mother’s release
Discussing Monday’s phone call with his wife, he said: ‘She was very upbeat, talked about how she’d been dreaming of being on that plane and it was just nice to hear that hope in her voice.’
‘I spoke on Sunday (with her) and she hadn’t had the court case so she was much more lifted from the fact that this really bad, ominous kind of sitting in front of the judge and all her interrogators hadn’t happened.
‘And then yesterday the positivity of being allowed another phone call, the media that was coming through in Iran, she was just more upbeat.’
Mr Ratcliffe added: ‘There’s a range of diplomatic things going on that will all be making a difference.
‘I am sure the fact the Foreign Secretary went to Iran and raised her case and stressed the importance of the UK-Iranian relationship and there was progress on all sorts of things.
‘ I’m sure all of that together improves relations, and yeah, the basics of him being there and caring can only help.’
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 during a holiday visit to show her baby daughter Gabriella to her parents.
She is currently serving a five-year sentence over allegations, which she denies, of plotting to overthrow the Tehran government.