Theresa May should not sit by while Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe suffers in an Iranian jail

Empathy is not enough – the British government must call an end to the media circus and bare its teeth in demanding her release

“If Iran has a policy of detaining dual nationals as a tool of diplomatic leverage then there will be consequences for Iran,” said Jeremy Hunt in November.

The foreign secretary visited the Islamic Republic, it seems, with the express purpose of securing the release of its most famous prisoner, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe or, at the very least, a visit.

All he achieved, however, was a photo call with her daughter. He got to play with some toys and held up a children’s book picturing a rather startled looking character from Peppa Pig, if not Peppa Pig herself (I am waiting for the Foreign Office to confirm).

A century ago Britain bestrode the Middle East. Today even with anti-Iran Trump in the White House, the best the Brexit-blighted UK can hope for is diplomacy by metaphor.

“Sorry Mr Hunt, no Nazanin, it’s her daughter or nothing,” Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif effectively had to inform our Jeremy, with his famously impeccable English.

And so the bittersweet photographs of daughter Gabriella circulate through the wires and the saga continues.

“Jeremy Hunt joins carols for jailed West Hampstead mum Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe” the Ham & High, her local paper, announces on 19 December.

A vigil is held outside Downing Street presumably to get the government’s attention. And what does the government do? Join the vigil. While the gesture is warm and Christmassy and kind of Mr Hunt as a private individual, he is THE FOREIGN SECRETARY.

Who is he trying to influence by being there? Himself? Theresa May? Can’t he WhatsApp the PM?

Still, at least Hunt showed up. That might have been what finally embarrassed or persuaded London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, to finally break his shameful silence on her illegal incarceration.

“Nazanin has been wrongly detained in an Iranian prison for over two years,” said Khan. “She has done nothing wrong, has broken no laws. The charges against her are completely false.”

Over two years. That’s City Hall spin for nearly three years – she was arrested in April 2016. Khan took till Christmas Eve 2018 to speak out.

(Politicians of foreign descent, as Sajid Javid showed us this week, lose it a little, when dealing with other Brits of foreign extraction. They can become more right-wing than their Anglo-Saxon colleagues – bar the most rabid – would dream of being.)

Britain is negotiating the interest that must be paid on the debt of £400m that it owes Iran after tanks ordered before the 1979 revolution were never delivered. The assumption is that once that is paid, Nazanin will be freed. But her arrest was arbitrary, her detention is tantamount to torture so there is no reason to expect fair play from the Supreme Leader. Yet it's he who holds the fate of the likes of Nazanin and other political prisoners such as the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.

So what must be done now that Nazanin, along with fellow prisoner Narges Mohammadi, is set to take up the Persian tradition of hunger strike for basic human rights?

If the answer to this question was obvious then the Islamic Republic would not be preparing to celebrate 40 years as a beacon to Islamists around the world. Iran is a regional strongman who, thanks to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the humbling of its arch rival Saudi Arabia, now looks perfectly capable of riding out the pain of Trump’s sanctions.

There is, however, one thing the UK can do: Theresa May must step up and demand Nazanin's release and bolster Hunt’s recent displays of empathy by spelling out the consequences that Iran will face if they don’t release her.

They should both remind Javad Zarif, who is keen to remind us of the independence of Iran's judiciary, of the pains he took to release Narges Kalbasi in 2017 – the Iranian charity worker who was wrongly jailed for murder in India.

Enough of the empty words – or the next trip to Tehran we might as well send Peppa Pig.