Debt, sanctions and a cold Westminster tent: how the Iranian hostages were freed

Liz Truss and her Foreign Office officials listen to a phone for the moment Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe boarded a plane out of Tehran after six years of detention. Photograph: Simon Dawson/No10 Downing Street

The long, necessarily cloak-and-dagger struggle to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori is a story that started in New York and – via the Sultan’s palace in Muscat and a cold pavement in London’s King Charles Street – ended with nail-biting delays at Tehran international airport.

After the two British-Iranians were finally freed on Wednesday, the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and her team received plaudits in the House of Commons for her role and quiet determination in overseeing this extraordinary endeavour.