LONDON: The UK government took too long to bring home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Iranian detention, a former British foreign secretary has said.
Jeremy Hunt, who was the UK’s foreign policy chief from July 2018 to 2019, added that she did not owe him or any of the four other foreign secretaries in the post during her stint in jail any “debt of gratitude.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Iran in 2016 and released last week after six years in detention.
In her first press conference since release, she asked why it had taken so long and so many different foreign secretaries to get her freed.
It should have happened “six years ago,” she said, adding that she “did not really agree” that she should be thanking the current British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for her release.
“I have seen five foreign secretary changes over the course of six years. That is unprecedented given the politics of the UK,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe said.
“I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five? It should have been one of them eventually. So now here we are. What’s happened now should have happened six years ago.”
It is thought that her release was tied to the repayment of a British debt of about £400 million ($528 million) owed to Iran for an arms deal made with the country’s pre-revolutionary regime that the UK failed to deliver on.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hunt said: “Those criticizing Nazanin have got it so wrong. She doesn’t owe us gratitude: We owe her an explanation.
“She’s absolutely right that it took too long to bring her home. I tried my best — as did other foreign secretaries — but if trying our best took six years then we must be honest and say the problem should have been solved earlier.”
He also suggested that “ministerial turnover may have been a factor” in the effectiveness of the UK’s operation and conceded that “so might initial reluctance to pay the debt.”
He said he supported an independent investigation into why it took so long to bring Zaghari-Ratcliffe home, and that he would be “glad to assist” it.
Hunt noted that “open scrutiny as to whether we could do things better is what happens in democratic, open societies,” in contrast to “places like Iran.”
“It is why, ultimately, we are wiser and stronger,” he added.
Hunt also said that people in government had “worried it would look like a ransom” if they were to pay and added that there were also “undoubtedly ... complications over how to pay a country that is sanctioned.”
Iran and the US are currently in talks to lift some of those sanctions in exchange for curbs to Iran’s nuclear program — and a flurry of diplomatic activity has been taking place as the two approach a deal.
