Boris Johnson is facing sustained pressure to stand down, after Iranian state TV said his remarks about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounted to an “inadvertent confession” she was spying in Iran.
The Foreign Secretary mistakenly told a parliamentary select committee the British-Iranian dual citizen was in Iran “simply teaching journalism”, contradicting claims that she was on holiday. Zahari-Ratcliffe’s family said they were afraid his words could be used to justify an espionage charge.
The former BBC employee, who subsequently worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation as a project manager, was arrested last year and sentenced to five years in prison for running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”, prosecutors argued.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
The five-minute broadcast on Iran’s national television service (IRIB) said Johnson’s comments revealed Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s true activities and “voided” British efforts to free her. There are fears she could face accusations of spreading propaganda against the regime and have her prison sentence doubled.
Johnson has reluctantly admitted he “could have been clearer” on the matter but, in a broadcast probably sanctioned by senior officials, Iranian state TV said this was not enough for the judicial authorities in Iran.
The Guardian reports Johnson held a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, earlier this week. “However,” the paper says, “the Iranian government can do little as the conservative-dominated judiciary is independent of the executive branch.” The London Evening Standard says the broadcast “could have stemmed from regime hardliners seeking to reassert themselves over the case”.
Responding to the Iranian TV report, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s Labour MP, Tulip Siddiq, said:
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry called on Johnson to admit he had got his facts wrong and apologise unreservedly to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family.
“If he does not have the basic gumption to do that, he deserves to lose his job immediately,” she said.
It appears Labour is ready to take full advantage of the crisis engulfing Theresa May’s cabinet following the departure of two senior ministers in less than a week.
The Independent reports that Labour is preparing for further Tory resignations – either Johnson or the de facto deputy prime minister Damien Green, who faces sexual harassment allegations, or both – which could bring down the Government and trigger a general election.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson claimed EU leaders are making contingency plans in case the Government falls before the new year.
“If Theresa May collapses, then the country is in a very bad place and would require a general election,” he said.
If the pressure is mounting on the ebullient Foreign Secretary, he has not shown it. Appearing on Fox News in the US, where he is meeting congressional and White House officials to discuss Iran, he made an impassioned defence of Donald Trump.
Praising the US President as “one of the huge great global brands”, he said Trump was “penetrating corners of the global consciousness that I think few other presidents have ever done”.
