Latest updates: Jeremy Hunt uses Twitter thread to say that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was failed by government
Hunt calls for inquiry into delay over Iran debt paymentEx-Tory MP urges inquiry into why Iran debt went unpaidIran debt should have been settled years ago, Zaghari-Ratcliffe saysRussia-Ukraine war: latest updates
Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary, was on the Today programme this morning explaining and elaborating on his Twitter thread about why he thinks Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was let down by the government. (See 8.43am.)
He said that when he was foreign secretary, the decision was taken in principle to repay the £400m debt owen to Iran (which was set by the Iranians as a condition for the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe).
I think there was a lot of reluctance when I arrived as foreign secretary because of a sense that it might be seen as a ransom. We don’t pay ransoms because it encourages more hostage-taking. But this is not a ransom, it is a debt.
That decision that we should pay it in principle was taken when I was foreign secretary. But then the practicalities of paying it when Iran is a sanctioned regime meant that it still took a long time to sort out.
Whilst it was an extraordinary achievement by Liz Truss and the Foreign Office to negotiate Nazanin and Anoosheh Ashoori’s release – and indeed Boris Johnson deserves some credit for the fact that he authorised the payment of the debt, which hadn’t happened previously and that kind of decision has to come right from the top – but it took six years and that is too long. We have to ask ourselves whether we could have done it more quickly.
I think the prime minister is desperate to go to Ukraine and has throughout this conflict felt a real – as the British people have done – a real emotional connection with the suffering of the Ukrainian people and a need for the West to unite in standing up to this threat from Russia which has been exposed to Ukraine.
I think it’s both to see what’s going on the ground, because it’s very different talking to somebody on the phone versus actually seeing it in practice – and, by the way, I should say that no decisions have been taken in relation to this – but then secondly, it’s actually to experience what is happening there, to see what is happening. To the people on the ground. I think that is very different to just speaking remotely.
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