Nuclear talks with Iran offer Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe new hope of release

Hopes are rising that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other British prisoners held in Iran may soon be released, as the final stages of a new nuclear deal are thrashed out.

Western diplomats say a text is on the table restoring the deal that was agreed by the major powers with Iran in 2015 but torn up three years later by President Trump. They say it is now up to Iran’s leadership to decide whether to approve it within the next few days.

That text makes no direct mention of western prisoners and Britain has always refused to countenance the idea of “trading hostages”.

The government insists that the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, a mother of one from Hampstead, north London, who worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and the British-Iranian prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, are entirely separate from the nuclear deal.

However, the United States has also demanded the release of its citizens held in Iranian prisons, including Morad Tahbaz, 66.

Robert Malley, the chief US envoy, said last month that “it was hard to imagine” reviving the deal while US prisoners were still locked up in Tehran. It has since been reported that alongside the nuclear aspects of the deal, western prisoners will also be released, in keeping with Malley’s demand. In return, the US will lift a block on South Korea handing over $7 billion it owes Iran for oil shipments, which it has been prevented from paying by American financial sanctions on Iran.

That leaves the position of the two British-Iranians ambiguous but Elika Ashoori, Anoosheh Ashoori’s daughter, said that the mood in Evin prison, where most of the western prisoners are held, including her father, was “cautiously optimistic”.

“Everyone knows that many times we’ve reached a crucial stage like this and nothing has come of it,” the actress in her late 20s said. “So they are, as well as us, just waiting to see how the events unfold.”

Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, said that negotiations were reaching a stage where things could go “right or very wrong”. If the talks failed at this late stage, that could have serious repercussions with new charges being brought against her. However, it was clear that discussions had moved forward.

“Nazanin is quite hopeful, in a way that she wasn’t at Christmas,” he said. “Who knows what will happen but it feels that we will either get good news or we won’t. Before, it was ‘we will either get bad news or no news’.”

Diplomats on all sides have agreed that a deal is closer than it has been at any time since the long pause in talks during the Iranian presidential election last June. That was won by Ebrahim Raisi, a noted hardliner, and Iran’s negotiators returned to Vienna with tough new demands that almost led to the talks collapsing.

The new text is understood to contain proposals to solve the central issues of the agreement.

The main sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy, particularly on its oil exports and financial system, will be lifted and Iran will return its nuclear programme to the limits set by the 2015 deal. There will be separate arrangements to prevent Iran being able to use the advanced uranium enrichment technology it has manufactured since 2018.

Iran will not get the cast-iron guarantees it sought that the US would never again pull out of the deal. On the other hand, the US will promise that sanctions beyond those set out by the 2015 deal will be lifted if they are incompatible with it.

“There is a sense that this text is it, that it’s time for a political decision to be made in Tehran,” a western diplomatic source said. “The Americans have made a very fair offer and I don’t think the Iranians will get a better one.”

If Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori are released it will be a weight off the back of the British government, which has been criticised for not doing enough to free them, in particular over payment of a debt owed to Iran of £400 million dating to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A deal was almost struck last summer and one suggestion as to why it fell through is that the US wanted to arrange the release of all the American and UK prisoners together, lending weight to the theory that their time may now have come.