Iran releases British citizens

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe hugged her 7-year-old daughter and husband, while Anoosheh Ashoori tearfully embraced his family at a British airbase in Oxfordshire early Thursday. Iranian authorities detained Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen, in April 2016 and sentenced her to five years for plotting to overthrow the government. She spent the last two years under house arrest at her parents’ home in Iran. Ashoori, also a dual citizen, was detained in 2017 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for alleged ties to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Iran also released Morad Tahbaz, a British-American conservationist of Iranian descent, on furlough, but he remains in Iran.

Why the releases? British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told lawmakers the deal followed months of diplomacy pushed forward by Iran’s change of government last summer. Britain agreed to pay Iran a $515.5 million debt, which will be regulated for humanitarian uses. The debt goes back decades to the Islamist Revolution in 1979 when the U.K. refused to sell more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks to Iran although the government had made an advance payment. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship and has a long record of holding dual nationals for negotiation purposes. The release comes as negotiators in Vienna said they have nearly finalized a way forward for the United States and Iran to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with other world powers.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archive, read my World Tour report on Ashoori’s arrest.