Nazanin is free. But at what cost?

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, alongside fellow prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori, has attracted enormous amounts of praise and joy at a time when the news has felt like a relentless stream of misery. How could you feel anything other than joy at the release of a young mother after six years away from her child? These freed Britons have endured an unimaginable plight, suffering horrific conditions in one of the world’s most notorious dictatorships. 

But when these outpourings of relief and jubilation pass, a serious reckoning over how the Foreign Office secured their release must take place. The British government has paid £400 million to a horrific regime with at best a questionable claim to the cash (although the government is bizarrely insisting that the payment has nothing to do with the two prisoners’ release). The Iranian demand was based on a contract between the MoD and the last Shah, who put down an order for 1,500 Chieftan tanks before being ousted in the Islamist revolution of 1979.