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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Martin Farrer (now); Nicola Slawson and Andrew Sparrow (earlier)

Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe land back in UK – as it happened

United Kingdom NATO Ukraine Gulf Boris Johnson Volodymyr Zelenksyy Vladimir Putin

Here is a picture of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori together as they walked from the plane.

Released British/Iranian Nationals Arrive Home To The UKBRIZE NORTON, ENGLAND - MARCH 17: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (L) and Anoosheh Ashoori, who were freed from Iran, gesture after landing at RAF Brize Norton on March 17, 2022 in Brize Norton, England. Today the British government repaid the Iranian Government almost £400 million owed from a 1979 deal for Chieftain tanks that were never delivered. On their release, Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr. Ashoori flew first from Tehran to Muscat, Oman then on to RAF Brize Norton on a UK government-chartered Titan Airways Boeing. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, has tweeted her delight at the homecoming.

And added that a third detainee, British-born Morad Tahbaz, has been released on furlough from prison although his freedom to leave Iran has not been secured.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori are now meeting their families inside the airport building at Brize Norton.

Worth pointing out that she was wearing a a navy dress and coat, with a bright yellow shawl and matching handbag – the colour of Ukraine.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after landing at RAF Brize Norton.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after landing at RAF Brize Norton. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Updated

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was visiting her parents in Iran when she was arrested, waved at cameras as she walked into a reception building at the Oxfordshire airport.

Ashoori, who was carrying a magazine, gave a salute.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori have just stepped onto British soil before what promises to be an emotional reunion with their families.

Ashoori appeared to be taking pictures with the flight crew before he disembarked, according to PA Media, which is pooling reports for the media from Brize-Norton.

The plane carrying Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe lands at RAF Brize-Norton a few minutes ago.

The plane carrying Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe arrives at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, after she was freed from detention by Iranian authorities, bringing to an end her six-year ordeal following her arrest in 2016 in Tehran on spying charges - allegations she has always denied. Picture date: Wednesday March 16, 2022. PA Photo. It is understood the UK agreed to pay £393.8 million owed to Iran after it cancelled an order of Chieftain tanks following the overthrow of the Shah in the revolution of 1979. See PA story POLITICS Iran. Photo credit should read: Steve Parsons/PA Wire

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband and daughter are waiting for her in the airport building, PA reports.

Their reunion will take place in a private room inside the building.

Also on the government-chartered flight is her fellow dual-national, Anoosheh Ashoori, who was jailed in Iran on charges of spying and “acquiring illegitimate wealth”. He denies both accusations.

Updated

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has returned to the UK

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has returned to the UK following her six-year detention in Iran after her flight from Muscat, Oman, landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire shortly after 1am GMT on Thursday, PA Media reported.

Read the full story here:

Updated

Nearly there. Flight ZT601 is very close to landing.

Flight NZR
Flight NZR Photograph: Flight

Updated

The Guardian’s foreign affairs commentator, Simon Tisdall, has also been looking at why the deal has come about now.

Britain havered on the seemingly crucial £400m debt repayment issue for a long time, so why has it suddenly been decided to cough up now if the releases could have been secured by this route long before?

Tisdall says the detainees’ fate became caught up with the west’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear programm. But although Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been a victim of delays on the nuclear issue, she has now apparently benefited from progress towards another agreement and the intertwining with the oil/Ukraine issue.

He writes:

This week’s breakthrough coincides with rising hopes that a revised nuclear deal will soon be agreed. Following the Ukraine invasion and subsequent western action to curb Russian energy imports, the US and Europe suddenly have a powerful incentive to lift sanctions and allow Iranian oil and gas back into a damagingly overpriced market.

You can read the full piece here:

Updated

Hello. This is Martin Farrer taking over blogging duties from Nicola as we count down to the arrival back in Britain of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.

The story has knocked Ukraine off the front of many of the UK national papers this morning, as editors seize the chance for some more uplifting news.

The Guardian features a large picture of Zaghari-Ratcliffe on the plane out of Iran and the headline “Zaghari-Ratcliffe released after six years in Iran jail”.

The Telegraph focuses on the family angle and the words spoken by Labour MP Tulip Sidiq in the Commons yesterday as Zagahri-Ratcliffe’s husband and daughter looked on from the public galler: “’Mummy is really coming home’”.

Although the story has relegated Ukraine, the two are very strongly linked. As the Telegraph story notes, her release and payment of a £400m debt by Britain will smooth relations with Tehran and possibly lead to Iran pumping more oil, therefore taking the pressure off soaring prices caused by the ban on Russian exports.

Lord Darroch, the former British ambassador to the US, has agreed Richard Ratcliffe was “probably” right to ignore foreign office advice not to go public about his wife’s incarceration by Iran.

He made the comment on ITV’s Peston. Sajid Javid was also on the show. He said the money the UK repaid to Iran was a “legitimate debt” and would not be used for terrorism.

“It won’t be because we’d never allow that,” he said.

Thousands of people across the world have been tracking Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s government-chartered flight back to the UK following a six year ordeal in Iran.

As many as 20,000 people at one time were tracing the journey of her flight home, where it is set to land at RAF Brize Norton, West Oxfordshire in the early hours of the morning.

Her plane became the most tracked flight in the world on Wednesday evening, according to Flight Radar.

It took off from Muscat shortly after 9pm and was set to touch down in the UK at after 1am. This is later than we previously reported.

Here’s The Guardian’s view on today’s events:

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return to the UK is first and foremost a moment of joy for her family; politics can wait. A mother and her young daughter, separated for nearly six years, can hold each other again. The loss of those years and the terror of not knowing how much longer the captivity would go on are hard for others to fathom. But that does not prevent us sharing gratitude that the ordeal is over.

The longing for reunion was a private grief, but its realisation has lifted public spirits. The relief is contagious. Richard Ratcliffe’s fortitude through the years of demanding that the government do whatever was required to secure his wife’s freedom has its deserved reward. He was wise to ignore Foreign Office requests that he be quieter on the subject.

Much of the diplomacy that led to her release and that of Anoosheh Ashoori, another British citizen, who has spent four years in an Iranian jail, will remain secret. It is unclear why Morad Tahbaz, a third detainee, was not on the same flight. He has been released from prison but remains under house arrest.

Some opacity is inevitable in negotiations to release hostages. That is not the term used by the authorities in Tehran, of course. There were judicial processes, of a sort – bogus charges of espionage. But the affectation of legality cannot sanitise an act as vicious as kidnapping for ransom. It has been known for some time that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release depended on the UK government’s readiness to repay a debt dating back to an uncompleted tank procurement in the 1970s. In public, ministers used to insist that the two issues were separate. The case inevitably became tangled in the wider web of strategic manoeuvres around the deal to ease western sanctions in exchange for suspension of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Read more here:

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.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss zaghari-ratcliffe call16/03/2022. London, United Kingdom. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and officials from the Foreign Commonwealth and Development listen on the phone as they hear the moment that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has boarded the plane in Tehran after being detained in Iran for six years. Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street
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

Others will say it should never have taken so long, and in a moment of triumph she has resorted to some brutal realpolitik, leaving behind other British citizens, like Morad Tahbaz, in Iran – ostensibly released from prison on “furlough”, but in reality still under armed guard.

It is also true that Truss happened to be in office – the fifth foreign secretary to have the file – when the moment for a deal finally became ripe.

But the foreign secretary did invest significant personal effort in the negotiations with Iran, with no guarantee of success. She was on the phone to Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, within days of taking office, and made a point of meeting Iran’s new foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in New York on the fringes of the UN general assembly in September, the first person-to-person meeting between the two countries since Jeremy Hunt returned empty-handed from a meeting in Tehran three years earlier. Most of the meeting was taken up with the discussion of how the issue of the £400m debt and the dual-national detainees could be progressed after two false starts earlier in the year.

Richard Ratcliffe on day 21 of his hunger strike, outside the Foreign Office, London, 13/11/2021 Sophia Evans for The Observer
Richard Ratcliffe on day 21 of his hunger strike, outside the Foreign Office in London in November 2021. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

But Truss was also galvanised by an unexpectedly successful 21-day hunger strike by Richard Ratcliffe outside the Foreign Office on King Charles Street in freezing November. With his small tent pitched so close to parliament, Ratcliffe’s cause became Westminster’s as MPs struck by his personal integrity developed a cross-party respect for him. The political momentum must have left the Foreign Office reeling. One meeting in Westminster Hall overflowed with MPs who had been to see Ratcliffe on hunger strike and were now demanding the debt be paid.

Read more here:

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt told Andrew Marr on LBC that it took “too long” to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home.

You can watch the clip here:

Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe arrive in Muscat, Oman on Wednesday evening.
Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe arrive in Muscat, Oman on Wednesday evening. They have since boarded another plane to the UK. Photograph: Oman News Agency/Reuters

Updated

The children of Anoosheh Ashoori have said their first conversation with their father after he returns home from Iran will be an “extraordinary” moment when “our suffering is going to end”.

Dual national Ashoori, 68, a retired civil engineer, was arrested in August 2017 while visiting his elderly mother in Tehran, and held in Evin prison.

During his time in detention, he was subjected to torture and a catalogue of inhumane experiences, according to Amnesty International UK.

He is set to be reunited with his family this evening along with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, another British-Iranian.

Empty chair protest for Anoosheh Ashooriepa09412273 Family of Anoosheh Ashoori, son Aryan Ashoori (L), wife, Sherry Izadi (C) and daughter, Elika Ashoori (R) stage an ‘empty chair protest’ to highlight the need for Boris Johnson to meet her family to discuss the plight of Anoosheh Ashoori, a British man who has been jailed in Iran, outside Downing Street in London, Britain, 13 August 2021. Anoosheh Ashoori, a 67-year-old retired engineer from south London, will have spent exactly four years in jail in Iran on 13 August after being arrested during a family visit to the country in 2017. EPA/VICKIE FLORES
The family of Anoosheh Ashoori during a protest in 2021. Photograph: Vickie Flores/EPA

Ashoori’s daughter Elika, 35, told the PA news agency the news had been “very, very sudden” and the family were “over the moon” after five years of turmoil.

Speaking alongside her brother Aryan, 32, she said:

The hardest part would be when he tried to take his own life.

He wanted to remove himself from the equation, in part because they were threatening us, our safety. They were telling him they were monitoring our movement.

Him trying to take his own life was, in a sense, a way to protect us. I think that’s as dark as this story got.

The siblings said they would need to “tread carefully” because of the trauma their father had suffered, but they hoped his homecoming would mark a return to normality.

Elika, a pastry chef, has made a cake to greet him with when he steps off the plane.

She said:

We’re over the moon. We have exercised cautious optimism for a while now but we’re happy we are finally able to let go.

I had planned to make an elaborate cake for him but because this was very, very sudden I only had time to make a small cake.

Aryan said:

If he’s back tonight, this will be the first time he’s sleeping in a room without 15 other men. It will just be his wife.

Elika added:

When he comes back here our suffering is going to end. No suffering is worse than what we’ve experienced.

We will face certain new challenges due to the fact that there has been a trauma and we have to tread carefully and take his feelings into consideration and our feelings into consideration.

It’s a fragile scenario so we need to be careful with how we go forward.

Commenting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori returning to the UK from Iran today, Dr Allan Hassaniyan, from the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, said it was still “too early to know about the elements of the British-Iranian negotiation” resulted in their release but that imprisoning Iranians with dual citizenships was part of a pattern.

He said:

Iran’s Islamic Republic has developed a pattern of kidnapping, taking hostage and jailing Iranians with dual citizenships as westerners working or visiting the country, to extort and blackmail the international community.

Iran’s Islamic regime has relied upon and deployed such measures of extortion as leverage during the negotiating of the country’s nuclear programme and accessing and gaining financial resources.

The Islamic Republic’s unjust imprisonment of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Mr Ashouri, and dozens of others demonstrates how the regime violates international law as well as the human rights of citizens of Iran and other countries.

Former prime minister David Cameron said the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “a piece of good news that we’ve all been waiting to hear for so long”.

Cameron, who was in No 10 when Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran, told Channel 4 News:

You can just only imagine what it’d be like to be separated from your family for so long, and have so much heartache, and you just feel for this family getting back together again and wish them well.

It’s fantastic news.

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt told Andrew Marr on LBC that he is “pinching himself” that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are coming home.

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt told LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr that he had wanted to pay the owed debt to Iran but was blocked.

He said:

Well, I was blocked initially. But I looked at this very carefully. And had it been ransom money, I would have said we shouldn’t pay it, however awful it is for Nazanin and Anoosheh [Ashoori] and their families, because you’ll just encourage people to take some more hostages. But I concluded it wasn’t ransom money. It’s a debt. And if we’re a country that is saying that everyone must obey the rule of law in the way that Putin does not for example, then we too have to pay our debts, however unsavoury the regime is that we owe the money to.

Whilst I was foreign secretary, I got movement. And I think the government concluded this was not ransom, and we owed the money. And then it was down to the mechanics, as you say, the issue of sanctions.

He admitted the situation had taken “too long” to resolve.

I have to say that I think in retrospect, we’ll look back and say we took too long. I think that’s something to think about another day. Today we want to celebrate, but I think it took too long. President Obama sorted out a similar issue for the United States in 2016. So, you know, we’ll want to ask those questions in due course.

Nazanin may never have been released without the campaign her husband ran to keep her in the public eye, he said.

I don’t think Nazanin will be home today if it wasn’t for her husband, Richard, and Richard did one incredible thing as a human being. The foreign office told him to keep quiet about this and he ignored that advice. Now the foreign office did this for very good reason. They said it would be easier to negotiate privately with the Iranians…

[But] he said, ‘No, I want the world to know about Nazanin’. And in doing that, what he did was he told the world about hostage taking and what that means is that now Nazanin is coming home, and Annosheh. We have a chance to stamp out hostage taking, and I would like to see the unity we’ve seen on sanctions against Russia, between democratic countries and us all saying look, ‘if you take a hostage from one of us, it’s like you’re taking a hostage from all of us and… we’re all going to react and the price will be too high.

Anoosheh Ashoori’s wife Sherry Izadi has spoken to Andrew Marr on his LBC show. She says her husband is looking forward to his first beer in five years.

She says she doesn’t think she will believe it is actually happening until she sees him walk down the steps of the plane.

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has been speaking on Times Radio about the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.

He said he wasn’t sure he’d ever see the day they would come home and that sometimes he despaired, adding that “it took too long” to resolve the issue.

He also said lessons could be learnt from the response to the invasion of Ukraine in relation to the taking of hostages.

I feel quite choked up about it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the day when we’d see on our TV screens that Nazanin, Anoosheh, are coming home. Their families are amazing, and I, you know, sometimes I despaired. But, you know, lots and lots of people worked really hard to make this happen.

I think Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, is one of the bravest people I’ve ever met and he kept the issue in the public eye. So look, I think it took too long. But I think that the reality is that we have now solved this issue and that is something to celebrate.

He said what’s happened also relates to what is happening in Ukraine with Russia.

It took too long. But I think it’s also true to say that, everyone involved with this issue that I came across in government worked really, really hard to try and solve it.

And I hope we learn lessons, but I think there’s one even more important lesson we can learn, and funnily enough, it relates to Ukraine. What we’ve seen with the sanctions against Russia, is that democratic countries can pack a mighty punch when they act in concert. And I think it’s taking everyone by surprise how rapid we have been in reacting with sanctions to what’s happened in Ukraine.

And I think that if we do the same thing when it comes to this vile 19th century practice of hostage taking, we say to any country ‘if you start taking hostages, if you take a hostage from one of us, that’ll be the same as taking a hostage from all of us,’ if we do that we can stamp out this practice and I hope that is the outcome – the broader outcome – of tonight’s good news.

Updated

Some people are following the flight Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are thought to be on via the Flight Radar 24 website.

The plane will land at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire after midnight, which is later than previously thought.

Maya Foa, joint executive director of legal action NGO Reprieve, has criticised Boris Johnson for choosing to visit Saudi Arabia today, saying she warned him it would be seen as a “tacit approval” of mass execution.

She points out that three people were executed today while the prime minister was there.

In a statement released on Twitter, the NGO said:

Saudi Arabia executed 3 more people this morning during [Johnson’s] visit. Travelling to Saudi Arabia after a mass execution signaled the UK will tolerate the gravest human rights abuses. Today’s executions are the immediate result. Johnson has blood on his hands.

This is a regime that believes it has been given carte blanche by its western partners to kill whomever it wants, whenever and however it wants and is therefore flaunting the Crown Prince’s power and impunity to the world.

The UK can’t cite Russia’s war crimes to justify trading blood for oil elsewhere. It shows the world we will apply double standards and embolden countries like Saudi into further atrocities, just as Putin was emboldened by our willingness to take his cronies’ cash for decades.

There are better and more sustainable ways to deal with the energy crisis than empowering murderous regimes like Saudi Arabia. We cannot show our revulsion for Putin’s atrocities by rewarding those of Mohammed bin Salman.

For those just catching up, my colleague Jamie Grierson has done an explainer on who Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz are and what they have endured since being arrested.

Both Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori are on their way back to the UK but Tahbaz has only been furloughed from prison and must remain in Iran.

The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said Tahbaz had been unable to return to the UK due to complications arising from his US citizenship.

Tulip Siddiq, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, has confirmed that Nazanin’s plane has taken off from Oman and that she is due to arrive back in the UK later today.

She also posted a picture on Twitter of Nazanin on the plane, looking pretty relaxed and very happy.

Updated

Boris Johnson has tweeted that the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, and the furlough of Morad Tahbaz are “huge achievements for British diplomacy”.

He pays tribute to the “tireless efforts” of those who have made it possible including the foreign office staff, ambassadors in Iran and the foreign secretaries who succeeded him in the role.

Here’s a video clip of Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, talking to press earlier with their daughter Gabriella.

He says he and his daughter have chosen some toys to take to the airport to show Nazanin when she lands.

Boris Johnson also said that the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “fantastic news”. In his pooled interview he said:

It is fantastic news that Nazanin is out. I am thrilled also for Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz who are also out.

It has been a lot of work by a lot of people. I want to pay particular tribute to her husband Richard. It is fantastic that she will be able to come back, see her family, see her daughter Gabriella.

Asked about claims that he made her situation worse when he was foreign secretary, by wrongly saying she was in Iran teaching journalism (see 1.05pm), he replied:

We must always realise that, sadly, the regime in Tehran is capable of holding people in this way. I think that people do need to recognise that. I am glad that after a great deal of UK diplomacy we have been able to get her out, get her back to her family.

That is all from me for today. My colleague Nicola Slawson is now taking over.

PM claims meeting with Saudi crown prince 'very productive' - but won't say if oil output will increase

Boris Johnson spent about an hour and 45 minutes talking to Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince, in Saudi Arabia today. Originally it was reported that he was going to the Gulf mainly to ask if the Saudis could increase oil production, to curb price rises for consumers in the UK (and elsewhere) - although by this morning he was playing down talk of this, and implying it was more to do with wind farm investment. (See 9.11am.)

But when the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked him in a pooled TV interview this afternoon if the Saudis had given him any “cause for optimism” about increasing oil production, Johnson was relatively non-committal. He replied:

I think there’s certainly an understanding that ... there’s an interest for Saudi Arabia, for all oil-producing and exporting countries, in making sure that the global economy is not damaged by the current spikes, that we don’t get the kind of inflation that we saw in the 1970s, we don’t see the stagflation. So it was a very productive conversation.

Asked if this meant an agreement had been reached that the Saudis would be upping oil production, he replied:

I think you need to talk to the Saudis about that, but I think there was a ... there was an understanding of the need to ensure stability in global oil markets and gas markets and the need to avoid damaging price spikes.

Johnson also claimed that he raised human rights issues with the crown prince. His visit coincided with reports that Saudi Arabia had carried out three more executions. Johnson would not give details of what he said on this topic. “It’s best if the details of those conversations are kept private, they are more effective that way,” he claimed. But Johnson also claimed that “things are changing” in Saudi Arabia in relation to rights.

Boris Johnson with Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, during a welcome ceremony, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier today.
Boris Johnson with Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, during a welcome ceremony, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier today. Photograph: Saudi Royal Court/Reuters

Updated

This is from Tulip Siddiq, who met Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter Gabriella in the House of Commons, where they were in the gallery to listen to the Liz Truss statement.

Rayner suggests Cummings' latest blog shows Raab misled MPs about Lebedev peerage

Turning away from the Iranian detainee story for a moment, Dominic Cummings has accused Boris Johnson of lying over claims that intelligence officers’ security concerns about giving a peerage to a Russian media magnate and son of a former KGB were overridden. My colleague Aubrey Allegretti has the story here.

In the Commons Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, has just raised this in the chamber. She said that when she asked Dominic Raab about this at PMQs, he said it was not true that Boris Johnson had asked the intelligence services to reconsider their assessment that Evgeny Lebedev should not get a peerage. She suggested the Cummings’s evidence implied Raab had misled the house, and she asked what could be done to get Raab to correct the record.

The Speaker has now power to adjudicate on whether or not a minister has misled MPs from the despatch box, but Rosie Winterton, the deputy Speaker who was in the chair, said that she was sure Raab would correct the record if that were necessary.

At PMQs Rayner asked Raab if he could “guarantee that the prime minister never asked anyone to urge the security services to revise, reconsider or withdraw their assessment of Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia?” Raab replied: “The suggestion she’s making is sheer nonsense.”

Wayne David (Lab) asks if it is correct that the money was paid via the Omani central bank.

Truss says Oman has been very helpful.

Truss says the UK was not paying a ransom. That was a legitimate debt that the UK owed. But paying it back was difficult because of the sanctions issues, she says.

Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter, Gabriella, are in the public gallery in the Commons to listen to Truss’s statement.

Janet Daby, the Labour MP for Lewisham East, told MPs that, as Anoosheh Ashoori’s MP, she was “thrilled beyond belief” by his release. She went on:

I’m incredibly happy for Anoosheh’s wife, Sherry, for his children, as well as for their families and friends. And today I spoke to Sherry, indeed I had been speaking to her yesterday as well, and she tells me that she has had several years of heartache and separation. And of course, all of this could have been avoided. It is right that the issue of the longstanding debt of approximately £400m was addressed and returned by the British government to secure the freedom of our British citizens.

“And I do salute, as well, the foreign secretary for making the IMS (International Military Services] debt her priority, and I thank her for that. But I would also like to say that it has been over 1,650 days since Anoosheh was detained and these are days of his life that cannot be returned to him.

Updated

In the Commons Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has just said that the government of Oman has been “incredibly helpful”, and that it flew Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori out of Iran.

Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, the Omani foreign minister, has just posted a picture on Twitter of the two of them landing in Muscat.

Tulip Siddiq, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, also paid tribute to Richard Ratcliffe in her question in the Commons, saying he had “set the bar very high for husbands”.

Earlier, in a post on Twitter, she said Zaghari-Ratcliffe had arrived in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Updated

Layla Moran (Lib Dem) asked if the money for the repayment of the Iran debt was coming frm the development budget. It is a large sum of money, she said

Truss said it was coming from the defence budget. (The money was orginally paid by Iran for a consignment of tanks.)

Truss said the situation for Morad Tahbaz was very difficult. He was a tri-national, and the Iranian government treat him as a US citizen. She said he had been held in appalling conditions, but that he was now back at his house in Iran.

Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary, paid particular tribute to Richard Ratcliffe. He says Ratcliffe was the bravest person he met as foreign secretary.

Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, welcomed the release of the detainees. But he asked Truss if she had looked at what happened the last time a country paid a ransom demand to the Iranians. It was the US government, and six months after the money was paid, the Iranians seized another six US nationals as hostages. He also said the money was spent on killing Sunni Muslims. He asks what has been done to assure this will not happen again.

Truss said the request for the debt repayment was legitimate. But she said agreed that the use of arbitrary detention by countries had to be ended.

Updated

Replying to Lammy, Truss suggested the key change was the arrival of a new government in Tehran within the last six months. She said that when she met her Iranian opposite number in New York last autumn, both of them insisted that they were serious about resolving the outstanding issues between them.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, paid tribute to Truss’s work, saying she had showed more skill in diplomacy than her “bungling boss”, Boris Johnson, who did more to damage the situation than help it when he was foreign secretary.

He said there were serious lessons to be learnt, and he restates Labour’s call for a review of the handling of these cases. (See 1.32pm.)

Liz Truss's statement to MPs about Iranian detainees

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, is making a statement to MPs.

She started by paying tribute to the detainees and their families.

She said that she made their release a priority when she became foreign secretary, and she read out an account of the talks leading up to today’s events very similar to the one published on the Foreign Office’s website. (See 2.14pm.)

She said she will continue to work for the return of Morad Tabhaz to the UK.

Turning to the debt owed to UK, she said it had now been paid - with the money ring-fenced for humanitarian purposes.

She said the terms of the repayment would remain confidential.

She said the release of British nationals, and the repayment of the debt, has resolved a serious disagreement between Britain and Iran. But Britain will continue to stand up for its interests, and for the safety of its nationals.

Updated

This is what Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said at PMQs when she claimed Boris Johnson’s “lazy comments” about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in 2017 had made her situation worse. (See 1.05pm.)

I’m sure members across the house want to show their support for their families and them. I know the minister would agree that this devastating situation must never be repeated, and other British nationals still trapped in Iran need to be brought home.

So will the minister commit to a review of these cases to understand what more could have been done by the British government to secure releases, and whether the lazy comments of the prime minister worsened the situation?

In reply Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, said:

I can tell [Rayner] having worked for two years with the concerted diplomatic effort led by the prime minister that we have done absolutely everything we can. She shouldn’t give succour to the despotic regime that detained our nationals in Iran or around the world by suggesting it is anyone else’s responsibility other than theirs.

Updated

Richard Ratcliffe says his family will need 'recovery process' but 'we live in future, not past'

Richard Ratcliffe also told broadcasters that his family will have to go through a “recovery process” following his wife’s return from Iran tonight. He said:

There is a recovery process - you can’t get back the time that is gone, that’s a fact. But we live in the future and not the past, so we’ll take it one day at a time.

Asked whether a hug tonight would “make all this hardship worthwhile”, Ratcliffe replied:

I’m not sure it was all worthwhile. I think it is going to be the beginning of a new life, a normal life, and hopefully a happy family.

And there will be bumps, no doubt, and all the normal squabbles we had before but, yeah, I think we’re really looking forward to seeing her.

Richard Ratcliffe, with his daughter Gabriella.
Richard Ratcliffe, with his daughter Gabriella. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, also thinks Boris Johnson deserves some credit for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. As John Simpson illustrated earlier, this is not a view universally shared. (See 1.05pm.)

Tulip Siddiq, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, has thanked people who have supported the campaign for her release.

Ratcliffe says his family now 'looking forward to new life'

Richard Ratcliffe has used an interview with BBC News to say thank you to everyone who has supported his campaign for the release of his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Asked what his message was to those who backed him, he said:

Thank you. This wouldn’t have happened today without all the care and support of people up and down the country. That’s ordinary people, important people, people in the media, people in politics, some celebrities.

It’s been a cruel experience, in some ways. But it has also been an exposure to such a level of kindness and care, from all walks of life. So I am deeply grateful to everyone that has got Nazanin home, that got Anoosheh home, that got Morad out on furlough.

Ratcliffe also said the government would have lessons to learn from what happened, although he said today was not the day to focus on that.

I think the government has two jobs: protect people in situations like this, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Part of that is doing what you need to do to get people home, and part of that is making sure [those who made mistakes] learn the lesson not to continue doing it. That second part is for another day, but for today, I’m really glad the way things are.

Asked how his wife had been, he said “pretty agitated as the day went on” and “anxious”. He said she had also had some “scary conversations” in recent days, with “people just trying to make sure that she would be well behaved when she came back”. But he said that it would be lovely to see her.

There is a big grin on her face in that photo [taken of her on the plane]. It is going to be lovely to see her, lovely to catch up with her. We’ve chosen which toys we’re taking so that she can get to see them. We’re looking forward to a new life.

Richard Ratcliffe
Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, carries his daughter Gabriella after speaking to the media. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Updated

Before his release from jail Anoosheh Ashoori wrote an article about what his daily routine was like in Tehran’s Evin prison. We have published it here.

Truss explains how 'creative diplomacy' allowed £400m debt to Iran to be repaid

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, will make a statement to MPs at 3.30pm about the return of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori from Iran, and the release of Morad Tahbaz from jail.

She has also issued a lengthy statement about the case on the Foreign Office’s website. It is worth reading in full, but here are the main points.

  • Truss said that the return of the two detainees to the UK, and the release of the third from jail, were “the result of tenacious and creative British diplomacy”. This seemed a reference to what she said about the debt payment.
  • She confirmed that the UK had paid the £400m owed to Iran – but she said the payment had been “ringfenced solely for the purchase of humanitarian goods”. This may explain why US sanctions – which were previously cited as a reason for the UK not being able to repay the money – were no longer an obstacle. She said:

The IMS [International Military Services] debt has been settled in full compliance with UK and international sanctions and all legal obligations. These funds will be ringfenced solely for the purchase of humanitarian goods.

  • She said that when she became foreign secretary she made solving this problem her top priority. She said:

I made resolving the continued detention of British nationals and the IMS debt payment my top priorities when I entered office in September 2021. In my first week, I spoke to the families of all the detainees and met my Iranian counterpart in New York.

  • She revealed some of the negotiations that took place to arrive at today’s result, thanking Oman in particular for its help. She said:

Last October and November I dispatched a team of Foreign Office negotiators to Tehran to secure the release of the detainees.

Last December I met Omani Foreign Minister Badr to secure Oman’s diplomatic assistance. We are grateful to our friends in Oman for their support in securing the return of our nationals.

Last month I spoke twice to Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian in a final push to bring negotiations to a successful conclusion. Our officials then held a last round of negotiations to sign off an agreement allowing Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori to return to the UK, and Morad Tahbaz to be released on furlough to his house in Tehran.

Liz Truss
Liz Truss. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Updated

Morad Tabhaz's sister says family is 'devastated' he's been left behind

While two British-Iranian dual nationals who were being held in Iran have been relaesed and allowed to leave the country (Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori), a third, Morad Tabhaz, is still in the country on furlough (effectively, under house arrest).

Tabhaz also has American citizenship, and this may be why he is not being allowed out of the country at the same time.

On the World at One his sister, Tarane Tabhaz, said the family were “devastated” by the decision. She said:

We are devastated. We are extraordinarily surprised that the only British born among the hostages has been left behind, and what more can I saw. We are absolutely and utterly devasted.

She said her brother should have been treated in the same way as Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She explained:

He’s been there under trumped up charges. He was, as Nazneen was, visiting. Unfortunately, this time around, he was he was obviously taken hostage for obvious reasons, because of the debt or for exchange purposes, because we don’t know otherwise.

She said that her brother had been “resilient”, but had not been well.

And she complained that her family had not heard from the Foreign Office since yesterday.

This is from my colleague Patrick Wintour.

Updated

Boris Johnson has now tweeted about the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe now in the air flying home, her MP reveals

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has now in the air flying home, her MP, Tulip Siddiq, has revealed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori will return to UK today, Liz Truss confirms

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has confirmed that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori will return to the UK.

And Morad Tahbaz has been released on furlough, she says.

Updated

This is from John Simpson, the BBC world affairs editor, on the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Simpson is referring in particular to a notorious error made by Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary, when he wrongly told MPs that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Iran teaching journalism when she was detained. The remark was cited by the Iranians as evidence strengthening the case for her imprisonment. Arguably the Iranians did not need any incitement to detain Zaghhari-Ratcliffe further, but not even Johnson’s most loyal supporters would claim that his comment made things any better.

Boris Johnson is now in Saudi Arabia.

Here is the readout No 10 issued from his meeting earlier with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Downing Street readouts from bilaterals are notoriously opaque, and from this it is impossible to tell whether or not the meeting was hugely productive, a complete waste of time, or something inbetween.

The prime minister set out his deep concerns about the chaos unleashed by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and stressed the importance of working together to improve stability in the global energy market.

The leaders welcomed the longstanding partnership between our two countries and discussed opportunities to increase collaboration between the UK and UAE on energy security, green technology, and trade.

They also agreed on the need to bolster our strong security, defence and intelligence cooperation in the face of growing global threats, including from the Houthis in Yemen.

Boris Johnson arriving at Riyadh Airport in Saudi Arabia.
Boris Johnson arriving at Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will land in the UK just after 10.30pm tonight, according to the Times’ Ben Clatworthy.

Updated

Reuters has also snapped this.

THIRD BRITISH-IRANIAN MORAD TAHBAZ FREED FROM IRAN JAIL ON FURLOUGH - IRNA

The Irna is the Islamic Repubic News Agency.

Tahbaz, a British-American businessman born in Hammersmith, London, who also has Iranian citizenship. As my colleague Patrick Wintour writes, Tahbaz, a conservationist, was sentenced along with eight others to 10 years in jail in November 2019 for “contacts with the US enemy government”. The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has tweeted frequently in support of his innocence, an acknowledgement that he is a British consular case.

Updated

According to Reuters, state media in Iran are now reporting that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashoori have left the country.

Updated

Boris Johnson has arrived in Saudi Arabia, the Press Association’s Sam Blewett reports.

In the Commons Raab was asked by the Labour MP Matt Western about Boris Johnson’s links to prominent Russians, and “what first attracted the prime minister” to billionaire oligarchs? In reply, Raab said Johnson was “a very social individual”.

Updated

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashoori have left Iran, Reuters reports, citing source close to families

This is from Reuters.

Detained British-Iranians Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashoori have left Iran after years in jail in the Islamic Republic, a source close to their families told Reuters.

Updated

Blackford says this case highlights wider problems with the government’s response to the refugee crisis.

Raab says the government is planning for the arrival of 100,000 Ukrainian children in the UK.

Back at PMQs Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, says there are 48 orphans from Ukraine who have been offered sanctuary in Scotland. But the Home Office won’t clear the paperwork. Will Raab intervene?

Raab says the government wants to help. But this is not about bureaucracy. It is about safeguarding, he says.

Updated

Iran's judiciary confirms release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Reuters has just issued this snap.

IRAN’S JUDICIARY CONFIRMS THE RELEASE OF BRITISH-IRANIAN NAZANIN ZAGHARI-RATCLIFFE AFTER YEARS OF DETENTION

Rayner says there is a fuel crisis. The government is not helping with the cost of living. It has neglected the security of the British people. And they partied during lockdown.

Raab describes the sanctions imposed on Russia, and accuses Rayner of just being in a “social media echo chamber”.

Rayner says the government has had 12 years to sort out the UK’s dependence on foreign oil. Yet now Boris Johnson is going cap in hand to a dictatorship.

Raab says, while Rayner was trying to make Jeremy Corbyn PM, Boris Johnson was coordinating an international response to the Russian chemical weapons attack in Salisbury.

Rayner asks if the PM ever asked the security services to revise their assessment of Evgeny Lebedev.

Raab says Rayner is talking nonsense. And he says she wanted Jeremy Corbyn to be PM, when he favoured pulling out of Nato and abandoning the nuclear deterrent.

Rayner says we have never been given details of the meeting between Boris Johnson and Evgeny Lebedev that took place two days after the security services advised that Lebedev should not get a peerage.

Raab says people get nominated for peerages for their contribution to society. He says many Russians contribute brilliantly to the country. Rayner should know better, he says.

Rayner asks Raab if, when he was foreign secretary, he overruled security service advice at any time. As foreign secretary he was in charge of MI6, she says.

Raab says this is nonsense. He says the House of Lords appointments commission has a vetting process. Raab says he never over-ruled the security services.

Updated

Angela Rayner asks for a review of the handling of the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, and whether Boris Johnson’s comments about her as foreign secretary made the situation worse.

Raab says sole responsibility for what happened to Zaghari-Ratcliffe rests with Iran.

Updated

Dean Russell (Con) asks if it is right for a company linked to Gazprom to get the contract to run the National Lottery.

Raab says Allwyn is seeking to cut its links with Gazprom.

Dominic Raab starts by saying Boris Johnson is in the Gulf.

He also says four members of the Ukrainian parliament are watching proceedings from the gallery today.

PMQs is starting soon. With Boris Johnson in the Gulf, Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, will be standing in for him. Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, will be standing in for Keir Starmer.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

PMQs
PMQs Photograph: HoC

It is hard for most of us not to feel emotional about the news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is finally being allowed home after six years, and it was certainly hard for Joanna Gosling, the BBC presenter, who could not conceal her feelings as she read out the news this morning. It is a sign of how Nazanin’s plight has gripped the nation.

This is from Kian Sharifi from BBC Monitoring.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has described the news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are set to return to the UK as “a massive ray of sunshine”.

This is from my colleague Patrick Wintour.

UK has settled £400m debt owed to Iran, Iranian state media reports

This is from the Associated Press news agency.

Iranian state media says Britain has ‘settled a long-overdue debt of $530m to Tehran, as dual national released.

British news organisations normally put the value of the debt at £400m.

Redress, an NGO working with victims of torture, has released a statement saying that delight at the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should not let people forget the injustice she, and others, have suffered at the ends of the Iranians. In a statement the Redress director, Rupert Skilbeck, said:

We are incredibly relieved that Nazanin will finally be reunited with her family in the UK after a horrific six-year ordeal. Nazanin has endured unimaginable suffering. Richard [Ratcliffe] fought day and night for his wife to be allowed to return to the UK and Redress is honoured to have supported them in securing Nazanin’s freedom.

Nazanin’s detention in Iran was always illegal and her treatment by Iran amounted to torture. In celebrating her release, we must not forget the deep and continuing injustice perpetrated by Iran. Iran’s systematic practice of holding foreign nationals hostage for diplomatic leverage cannot be allowed to continue.

Richard Ratcliffe’s sister told the BBC earlier this morning that the family felt they were now on the “home run”. Rebecca Ratcliffe told the BBC:

It is quite emotional day today. It feels like we are on the home run now but until she leaves that airport we can’t quite believe it. We found out about an hour ago that Nazanin had been picked up and taken to the airport with her parents. She is still actually under Iranian control in the airport. She is still not free but it definitely feels she is about to be.

Ratcliffe was speaking earlier this morning. Within the last few minutes Reuters has said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is now in British hands at the airport. (See 11.08am.)

Here is the full quote from the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq paying tribute to the role paid by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, in getting her constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, released. Siddiq told Times Radio:

I’ve dealt with three prime ministers and five foreign secretaries, it’s finally when I came to a woman who was foreign secretary who actually did something.

We had such a difficult time with the other foreign secretaries speaking to them trying to convince them about this debt [the £400m debt owed by the UK to Iran]. In some ways, I would defend the government by saying they never really denied they owed Iran the money, because they went through the international courts ... Ben Wallace did stand up in parliament and say, it’s a debt that we owe Iran.

So, it wasn’t a dispute about whether we owe the money. It’s more about them not wanting to link the fact that we owe the money and the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, even though Nazanin was actually told by the Revolutionary Guards over and over again, when she was in prison, that the reason she was being held is that because of our failure to pay the debt ...

When we started speaking to Liz Truss from very early on, it did seem like she was making some sort of plan to pay back the debt. And if she’s managed to make it happen, then it’s quite an achievement.

Tulip Siddiq with Richard Ratcliffe campaigning on behalf of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in December.
Tulip Siddiq with Richard Ratcliffe campaigning on behalf of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in December.
Photograph: Nicola Tree

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe handed over to British team at Tehran airport and leaving Iran today, Iranian state media reports

This is from Reuters.

British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been handed over to a British team at Tehran’s International Imam Khomeini airport and she is leaving Iran on Wednesday, Iranian state media reported.

Keir Starmer has expressed his delight at the news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been released from custody in Iran. Speaking to reporters on a visit to Huddersfield, he said:

For Nazanin, for Richard, and their daughter, this is an incredible moment after so much anguish. The courage that they have shown over so many years, I’ve met Richard many times - I know, I can feel what this will mean for him, for Nazanin, for their daughter and their family.

My emotion, I think, will be the emotion of families across the whole of the country which is just so pleased for them.

There will be questions of course, for other people to answer, but at the moment but at the moment, I’m so pleased for them as a family that this incredible moment appears to have come about and I think the British public - all of us - will just be wishing them all the very best after the unimaginable ordeal that they’ve been through.

MPs have been among the many Britons celebrating the news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori have been released. Invariably there is much more focus on Zaghari-Ratcliffe, because of the long, dignified and very public campaign for her release led by her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has made her a household name. Here are some of the tweets from parliamentarians this morning.

From David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary

From Penny Mordaunt, the Cabinet Office minister

From Harriet Harman, the former deputy Labour leader

From Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chair of the foreign affairs committee

From Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader at Westminster

From Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader

From Caroline Lucas, the Green MP

From Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chair of the Commons defence committee

From Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader

From Layla Moran, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson

Rupert Skilbeck, director of Redress, an NGO that works with the victims of torture, told Sky News a few minutes ago that his organisation has been in regular contact with Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe. He went on:

We understand that [Nazanin] is still in the control of the Revolutionary Guard. The handover hasn’t yet taken place.

Skilbeck said he had been in contact with Richard Ratcliffe too this morning.

It’s obviously the final stages of the release, where she will hopefully be put on a plane. But of course until that actually happens everyone is incredibly anxious, including the fans. We can only imagine what these last moments are like for them.

Skilbeck said that someone who had undergone the sort of torture Zaghari-Ratcliffe experienced would take “many years to recover” and he said it would be important for her to be given the time to recuperate.

Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP who has Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a constituent, has paid tribute to Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, for the role she played in getting Nazanin released. This is from the Times’ Steven Swinford.

Penny Madden, the lawyer who represents Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, told Sky News a few moments ago that “hopes remain very high” this morning. But she said Richard was not able to relax until Nazanin was on the flight home. She said she had spoken to Richard this morning. He was “excited”, but “tinged with anxiety”.

She said their daughter, Gabriella, was also thrilled about the prospect of their mother’s return.

Asked to what extent she thought Nazanin’s release was linked to the war in Ukraine (which has led to the UK re-assessing its relations with other oil-producing countries in the Middle East), Madden said it was impossible to say.

This is from Tulip Siddiq, the Hampstead and Kilburn MP who has Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a constituent and who has been campaigning prominently for her release.

Here is my colleague Patrick Wintour’s backgrounder on the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, filed last night.

And here is an extract.

To her astonishment on Sunday, the [Iranian foreign] ministry returned Nazanin’s British and Iranian passports, the start of her release process. It was the first time she had seen them since their confiscation in April 2016

The Foreign Office swore her to secrecy. Early on Tuesday a well placed Iranian foreign correspondent revealed the debt had finally been paid.

The Foreign Office was concerned by the leak, fearing it showed Iran might be using the possible release of Nazanin and Anoosheh Ashoori as last-minute leverage to secure better terms on the lifting of sanctions in Vienna.

The nuclear deal was virtually complete, but some feared dangling the liberation of two high profile British detainees might be a way to extract some final concessions from the British or the Americans.

In her letter five years ago to her daughter, Nazanin wrote: “There will come a day when we will throw away all these bitter and old memories, all that are decayable and only keep the lessons we learned from them. You, I and your father will never succumb to this hurricane of fate. The love we share knows no boundaries and walls. It is our life. There will come a day that we will be able to live fresh all the days of our lives.”

Perhaps that day is finally coming.

This is from the snap from Reuters.

Two detained British-Iranians on way to airport to leave Iran - lawyer

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori released by Iranians

From my colleague Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor

Johnson says 'things are moving forward' in talks for release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

In her interview with Sky News Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, confirmed that a British team was in Tehran negotiating with the Iranians for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other British-Iranian dual nationals held in the country.

Truss said that repaying the £400m that Britain owes Iran - a debt linked by the Iranians to the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe - was a “priority” for her. But she refused to say any more. She said:

We do have a team in Tehran, but I absolutely can’t say anything else at this stage.

Boris Johnson was also asked about the negotiations for the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe in his interview this morning. He replied:

Although, you know, things are moving forward, I shouldn’t really say much more right now just because those negotiations continue to be under way and where we’re going right up to the wire.

Here is my colleague Patrick Wintour’s overnight story about the situation.

Updated

Truss says she does not think Putin serious about wanting peace settlement

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, was doing a full interview round this morning. Here are the main points from what she said.

The first precursor to any successful peace talks has to be a ceasefire and Putin withdrawing his troops from Ukraine. It is very, very difficult for the Ukrainians to negotiate with a gun against their heads.

And I am very, very concerned that Putin is playing a smoke-and-mirrors game of trying to claim that he is seeking peace while, at the same time, continuing with this appalling war he instigated and is not making the progress he thought he would.

She also suggested she did not see much significance in Zelenskiy saying Ukraine would not join Nato, because she said this was “not the real issue” for Putin. (See 9.11am.)

  • She said there was no guarantee that Russians sanctioned by the UK, like Roman Abramovich, would be allowed to return to the country after the war was over. Asked if Abramovich could come back after Russian troops left Ukraine, she replied:

No, I haven’t said that. Because I’m saying even if the war was to end - and I fear we are not near the end, at this stage - huge devastation has been caused, lives have been lost as a result of this war. And there will need to be a reckoning with all the people who supported Putin, including Abramovich.

  • She said the UK’s “cumbersome” sanctions legislation before the Economic Crime Act became law yesterday meant the government could have been liable for unlimited damages if it made mistakes. Asked why the UK took longer than other countries to sanction many oligarchs, she replied:

The specific issue here is that we have - or had - some very cumbersome legislation. We essentially had unlimited damages if oligarchs sued us, so that made it very difficult for the government to build the evidence cases against these oligarchs.

Since the invasion took place, we’ve put through emergency legislation to cut out these huge damages, which means we’ve been able to now sanction more individuals and more entities than either the US or the EU.

Truss was referring to laws passed by her own government. Before Brexit Britain was part of the EU’s sanctions regime, but it had to pass its own sanctions legislation when it left.

  • Truss said sanctions from the UK and other countries were having a “debilitating affect on the Russian economy”.
  • She said further British sanctions should be expected, saying “we’ve got more individuals on our list” as well as companies to target.
  • She defended Boris Johnson’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia today, saying Britain will need to work with countries “we don’t necessarily agree with” in the face of Russian aggression.

Here is the Ministry of Defence’s latest assessment of the situation in Ukraine.

Johnson says there’s ‘no way Ukraine is going to join Nato any time soon’ as he starts Gulf visit

Good morning. Boris Johnson is in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where he has been meeting the crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. In a pooled interview, he said there was no prospect of Ukraine joining Nato any time soon. Asked about President Zelenskiy’s acceptance yesterday that Ukraine would not join Nato, Johnson replied:

I talked to Volodymyr [Zelenskiy], again, yesterday. And you know, of course, I understand what he’s saying about Nato and the reality of the position. And everybody’s always said, and we have made clear to Putin, there’s no way Ukraine is going to join Nato any time soon. But the decision about the future of Ukraine has got to be for the Ukrainian people and for Volodymyr Zelenskiy as their elected leader, and we will back him.

It is not clear quite what the significance of these remarks might be. Vladimir Putin wants Ukrainian membership of Nato to be ruled out for good, and so Zelenskiy’s comment - which Johnson has semi-endorsed this morning - may be a hint that the peace negotiations, which have so far been fruitless, are nudging into more serious territory.

But equally it might be that Zelenskiy and Johnson are saying what they think is obvious, without ulterior purpose (a more common occurrence in politics than one might assume). Asked about the significance of Zelenskiy’s remark in an interview on the Today programme this morning, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, replied:

It’s a matter for Ukraine whether or not they decide to join Nato, and of course a matter for Nato members.

I’ve always thought that that isn’t the real issue, that it is a smokescreen. If you look at all of Putin’s public statements - his Munich security conference speech in 2007, his essay of last year - this is about recreating a greater Russia, and essentially subordinating Ukraine under Russian authority, as well as extending more broadly to other Eastern European states.

This is an assessment shared by the Economist’s Oliver Carroll.

In his pooled interview this morning Johnson also played down the prospect of his trip to the Gulf today - after the UAE, he will be in Saudia Arabia - being about persuading the Saudis to increase their supply of oil to the west. This is what No 10 seemed to be briefing at the end of last week, when the trip was first reported, but today Johnson claimed his visit was just as much about drumming up more investment in wind energy. In his pooled interview he said:

The reason for coming here is that it’s not just that they’ve got oil. They’re also some of the biggest investors here, in the Gulf, in UK renewables, in our wind farms. And that’s what we’ll be talking about.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Kevin Foster, the immigration minister, and Lord Harrington, the new minister for refugees, give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.

Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit to Huddersfield, inspecting a retrofitting project.

10.15am (UK time): Boris Johnson is due to arrive in Saudi Arabia. He is meeting Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, at 1pm, and he is expected to record a clip for the media in the late afternoon.

12pm: Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, faces Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, at PMQs.

12pm: Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, holds a briefing on new polling from Our Scottish Future, the group he set up to campaign for an alternative to “both ‘No Change Unionism’ and ‘No Compromise Nationalism’”.

After 12.30pm: MPs begin a debate on an SNP motion on Ukrainian refugees, saying they should not need to apply for visas prior to their arrival in the UK.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.

Boris Johnson arriving for a media interview at the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Boris Johnson arriving for a media interview at the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Updated

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Wrestler, film star – and future president? Why we should all take Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson seriously
The WWE icon, already one of Hollywood’s highest-paid film stars, has shown himself to be ‘focus group-proof’
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Eating this fruit before bed can help you sleep better – but expert opinions are divided
TikTok strikes again with its avocado sleep hack – but does it actually work?
T3
T3
Cher was ‘shocked’ to discover her legal name after birth certificate mix-up
Pop icon had gone for years without knowing what was written on her birth certificate
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Chuck Woolery, host of ‘Love Connection’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’, dies aged 83
Woolery played matchmaker on popular dating show ‘Love Connection’ for 11 years
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
How to make your outlets and switches look nicer, according to interior designers
Make the mundane beautiful with these designer-approved methods
Homes & Gardens
Homes & Gardens
The Observer view: Selling a piece of fruit for £4m isn’t bananas, it’s decadent. Art is better than this
The sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s work, Comedian, to a crypto entrepreneur is a grim concept that has little to do with disruption
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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