Jeremy Corbyn has the power and respect of Iranians to free Nazanin from jail – he must come forward now

Corbyn has the power not to pay Iran a penny and still free Nazanin – that’s how respected he is in Iran

Labour leader could put human rights, not business, at the fore (EPA)

“If I were the member for Qom South, I would feel that it was my patriotic duty to equip my country, as fast as possible, with the biggest, shiniest, pointiest and most explosive thermonuclear device on the market. I would want an Iranian nuke…” wrote Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph back in 2006.

Perhaps he had been taking his cue on the Ahmadinejad government from his friend Darius Guppy, the half-Iranian fraudster and Old Etonian who defended Iran’s disputed election results of 2009 – right after scores of unarmed protestors had been killed and injured in the street.

Johnson has proved to be a friend to Tehran again by giving its Revolutionary Guard and judiciary the gift of the wholly erroneous “confession” that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists when she went to Iran more than a year and a half ago with her baby daughter.

Johnson had to be pressured to acknowledge his mistake, just as he had to be lobbied for nearly 600 days to publicly even acknowledge the illegal detention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 38-year-old UK citizen from north London who has been separated from her daughter and husband.

Now the problem he has long ignored has come to haunt him and possibly define his time as Foreign Secretary – the front page of yesterday’s Evening Standard reported his job was on the line if Iran decides to extend Nazanin’s five-year sentence as a result of his gaffe.

So what should Johnson do? It’s actually too late to take his words back – the Iranians will only call him a hypocrite, consolidating their spin of a British conspiracy.

What’s clear is there is a deal to be done: this is about money. In 2010, European courts ordered Britain to pay £400m which it owes from uncompleted business deals stretching back to the Shah’s time.

The question surely dogging the government is, “Is Nazanin worth the money?” The answer is: Yes. Negotiations must begin – or there will be more cases like this.

The UK government was money-oriented enough to follow the EU and President Obama’s lead in overlooking Iran’s human rights problem when signing the 2015 nuclear deal. Now their fingers are burnt. They did not want Nazanin to become a household name and hoped it would disappear.

We were led to believe a new Iran had arrived with President Hassan Rouhani. The UK bought into the lie that Iran had turned into a Scandinavian social democracy overnight: Rouhani the Moderate. Rouhani the Reformer.

We have since seen that the Islamic Republic is the same beast it’s been since its inception in 1979; only now it’s more powerful than ever, and wants money from Britain in order to release Nazanin.

There is one man who can broker that deal. And that man is not Boris. It’s Jeremy Corbyn – the Labour leader must now come out and demand Nazanin’s release.

Corbyn has the power not to pay Iran a penny and still free Nazanin – that’s how respected he is in Iran.

He and Jack Straw – who the Iranians also have a soft spot for, having received him a number of times as Foreign Secretary – could fly to Tehran tomorrow and sort this matter out at a snip.

The pair joined a parliamentary delegation visiting Iran in 2014 which included Norman Lamont, chair of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce – the first such delegation since the British embassy in Tehran was sacked in 2011. There is little chance of former Chancellor Mr Lamont being persuaded to upset his business contacts by calling for the release of an innocent prisoner.

Corbyn has that power and it would put paid to the notion that he is a lackey to Shia Islamists, residue from his days heading Stop the War Coalition – instead he can accuse the Tories of that.

Boris Johnson is confused, incompetent, and not as wily as his Iranian counterparts, who have snookered him already. He may speak Latin but by Iranian standards of streetwise, he is dim and lacks self-awareness.

Corbyn used to work with Iran’s state broadcaster – he has more clout to not only free Nazanin but also renegotiate a relationship with Iran and puts human rights, and not business, to the fore.

It’s time for him to step up and show the brinkmanship that a government exhausted by the shambles of Brexit negotiations does not have the wherewithal to deliver.

As for Johnson? Who knows. Maybe he really could become the MP for Qom South.

Peyvand Khorsandi is performing his comedy show Gorilla 17 and 18 November at the Leicester Square theatre in London