The treatment of Nazanin and her husband Richard is a disgrace to Iran’s history and the spirit of its people

Universal freedoms had great resonance across the country – until 1979, when it was hijacked by fanatics to whom human rights mean precious little

And so I return without apology to a subject that I have covered in this column before: the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who was seized in 2016 by the Tehran authorities, and is on a hunger strike – her third – in jail. For the past week, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has mirrored her protest from a plastic chair on the pavement outside the Iranian Embassy in London.

Those who have followed the story of Nazanin and Richard will know of the astonishing cruelty that has been meted out to this family. Their baby daughter, Gabriella, had travelled with her mother to Iran; since Nazanin’s arrest, Gabriella has been in the care of her maternal grandparents in Iran. Initially, she was unable to be brought back to the UK as her passport had been confiscated. It has since been returned, but the agonising prospect of bringing an end to her brief visits with her mother in prison has presented an impossible dilemma to Nazanin and Richard, and so Gabriella remains in Iran, no longer able to speak any English in video calls to her father.

This latest hunger strike comes on the back of two developments: the passing of Gabriella’s fifth birthday, and the threat of a second trial. This time, Richard has joined her in hunger striking, not in abstract solidarity but to provide a visible face for the protest in a way that Nazanin simply can’t. To many, Nazanin is a headline or a distant thought, but here is an English accountant sitting on a rainy pavement, in hunger and in pain.

I’ve met Richard a number of times since Nazanin’s imprisonment, and witnessed his desperation to keep her story alive in the UK. Because Nazanin has dual nationality, some callous individuals have written her off as “an Iranian problem” and none of our concern, but you cannot ignore Richard. I went to sit with him for a few hours this week and met his mum, Barbara, who travels from Hampshire to offer her love and support in shifts with his sister, Rebecca, who travels up from Cardiff to be with him when she’s not working as a GP and caring for her own children.

The Iranian ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, appears to view Richard as little more than an inconvenience. On the first day of Richard’s protest, embassy staff erected a steel barrier in front of their doors, forcing Richard’s little pop-up tent closer to the road. They have chosen to barricade themselves inside their own embassy rather than show the least bit of compassion to a man whose life has been stolen away from him.

Baeidinejad has previously claimed that the UK has no right to seek to protect Nazanin, commenting that “Iran does not recognise dual nationals”. Back in reality, Nazanin’s possession of British nationality is not up for debate – it is a fact – but the Iranian authorities choose to pretend otherwise, perpetuating this outrage.

And when I say this, I hope you will understand that it is also an outrage to the history and the traditional values of Iran.

Iran is a very old and very proud nation – a melting pot of cultures and religions inhabited by some of the most charming, hospitable, and friendly people you could wish to meet. It is the land of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great, founder of the first Persian empire, and of the Cyrus Cylinder – a clay cuneiform tablet dating back 25 centuries to the conquest of Babylon. It speaks of racial and religious freedom, the freedom to speak in your own language, and the right of those who had been captured in Babylon to return home, and is regarded by many as the first declaration of universal human rights. Whether or not that’s an accurate historical understanding of the text, it is one that had great resonance in Iran across the centuries, for every sector of society from the ruling classes to the common man.

That is, until 1979, when the country was hijacked by fanatics to whom human rights mean precious little, and whose values are the antithesis of the culture and spirit of its people.

But the lessons and values of the Cyrus Cylinder have soaked into the core of Iranian culture, and the current regime, dominated by dogmatic and violently oppressive clerics, is far off from the way most Iranians still see themselves and the world.

You may wonder, then, why so few of the thousands of London’s Iranians have found their way to the embassy to join Richard’s protest. It’s not because they don’t care, but because they are scared. They fear that they will go on record as having supported Richard and meet the same fate as Nazanin when they visit their own families and friends in Iran.

When my family was exiled from Iran 40 years ago after my writer father criticised the regime, only to have the Iranian authorities make an attempt on his life in London in 1984, the possibility of visiting our extended family in Iran evaporated for good – it will never be safe, and we will never risk it. So myself and my family have nothing to lose by supporting Richard. Others do.

In an interview with Jon Snow for Channel 4, ambassador Baeidinejad told Richard to end his protest, warning that “he should think very wisely in what manner and in what formalities he wants to express his opinions and his concerns”.

His opinions and his concerns.

Richard has done everything in his power to toe the line and be diplomatic for the sake of a resolution, but he has now been separated from his wrongly imprisoned wife for over three years. He has been separated from his daughter since she was 21 months old. On Tuesday, she celebrated her fifth birthday, having grown during their separation from a babbling toddler into a young girl who, every single day, with every action and utterance, reveals the little person that she is and the woman that she will become.

As a parent myself, I cannot even imagine the excruciating pain that Richard will have suffered – the grief, even, over so many lost moments that he will never get back – but I somehow feel that “opinions and concerns” won’t quite cover it. If anything, it’s a testament to his extraordinary strength and restraint that he can sit on that pavement peacefully, rather than screaming loudly enough to shatter every bullet-proof window in London.