Joy at the release of two Britons from an Iranian jail should not conceal the squalid diplomacy revealed by their ordeal. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori have been victims of the latest weapon of western coercion, on display in all its impotence.
The essence of the case isn’t disputed. Britain owed Iran £400m for undelivered military equipment. Britain found the Tehran regime distasteful. It also said it should not be allowed to build nuclear plants. With America and others, it signalled this distaste with what was, after the 1979 Iranian revolution, a relatively novel form of aggression: a comprehensive trade embargo. The Iranians retaliated with an equally medieval weapon: the taking of hostages. There followed a saga of diplomatic duplicity, intransigence and incompetence on all sides.
