“Increasingly, my view is pretty simple: It’s a game of chess between two states. We get to see part of it – part of it we don’t get to see – but it’s not personal.” This is Richard Ratcliffe’s take on the almost 6-year-long detainment of his wife Nazanin Zhagari-Ratcliffe in Iran. For Richard, of course, not to mention their seven-year-old daughter Gabriella, Nazanin’s detainment couldn’t be more personal.

Nazanin is one of a number of British-Iranian citizens whose safe return to the UK is dependent on the British government paying a £400 million debt which it has owed to Iran since the 1970s. “Typically ransom means getting money that’s not yours, whereas this is Iran’s money – there’s no ambiguity around it,” Richard explains. This was determined in a court of international arbitration and is acknowledged by numerous high-ranking MPs, including Boris Johnson. “The government will sometimes try to claim the moral high ground,” Richard says. “We can’t be seen to encourage hostage-taking, so we can’t pay it. Well, with respect, you not paying it is what’s provoking that.”

I ask Richard if he thinks the debt and the hostages are being used for bargaining power in the nuclear talks between western powers and Iran: “I think … yes,” he says. “International politics operates at many levels. We were taken following the signing of the nuclear deal. That would have been partly because relations were thawing – because all these pots of money were coming back – and actually, partly because the Revolutionary Guard were worried about losing control, so were asserting their power. You move on five years, Trump comes in, tries to rip it all up, and now we’ve got the Biden administration cautiously seeing whether they can revive the nuclear talks – with the UK and Europe generally wanting that to happen. I think it’s arguable that Iran has used all the hostages as bargaining chips in relation to that enterprise – nuclear peace, which for them, is about ending sanctions and getting their money back.”

Richard laments the entanglement of individuals like Nazanin in such complex international affairs, hinting at the British-Iranian-American prisoner swap last year, which was reported to have broken down hours before its completion. “It’s quite an unpalatable transaction, to say: ‘OK have your money back, so we can have this person,’ but it’s quite simple, whereas a much more complicated multilateral deal means there are more stakeholders with their own priorities, so I think it’s made more complicated.” Not only is it more complicated, but “dangerous”. “At the moment we’ve had a different worry, in that the nuclear talks might get somewhere, they might not. They might all fall apart. And actually, if they fall apart, it could shift from talking to each other to shouting and threatening to throw stones at each other. In which case, we won’t worry about being a chess piece – we’ll worry about being a human shield.”

“It could shift from talking to each other to shouting and threatening to throw stones at each other”

The biggest obstacle faced by Richard and the other families is the murkiness surrounding either governments’ intentions. Last year Richard’s MP was told she wasn’t allowed to mention the debt in parliament. “All of us are looking at a shadow plane – we see part of it, and part we don’t. We’re trying to make sense of it. It’s groping around in the dark half the time.” As a result, when I ask what Richard’s next steps are, he offers: “‘I don’t know’ would be the official line, and probably the private one. We’ve got a series of sessions with other families in the next few weeks where we’ll talk through where we think things have got to in Vienna [where the nuclear talks are taking place] and what makes sense to try and do over the next few months, but I’ve got no idea.”

What’s more, Richard has been campaigning for Nazanin’s return for a very long time. He has staged two hunger strikes, first at the Embassy of Iran, and then at the UK Foreign Office. His petition has over 3.7 million signatures. “We’ve been going for a long time. That’s attritional, both in terms of our energy and ability to campaign creatively, but also in terms of people’s compassion, interest and attention. There’s only so many times you can go on television and say: ‘Nazanin’s really sad to be in prison.’ Something like a hunger strike is fairly extreme; you can’t keep doing them because, again, they lose their currency. And also I have to say,” Richard laughs, “as a middle-aged man I can’t keep doing them, it’s quite hard.”

“All of us are looking at a shadow plane, we see part of it, and part we don’t”

A sense of the emotional impact of such a lengthy and uncertain campaign emerges when I mention the recent release of British Council employee Aras Amiri. “It’s great news for Aras and her family,” Richard says, “but it’s definitely double-edged for Nazanin, because Aras and Nazanin were in the cells together, they were good pals. She’s from North London as well – she’s quite similar. She went back on holiday for a week and got picked up, but she got picked up after Nazanin. And you kind of think there should be a queue, right? We’ve done longer, so we should go first – but that’s not how it works. So it’s been a bit tough for Nazanin.” There is also a hint at the burden on Richard himself, as he adds: “Her family stayed a lot quieter, but we can’t go back now.”

We return to the metaphorical chess game. “On that chessboard, we’re probably one of the back row pieces, we’ll stay until later. We’re seeing the pawns being moved around. Being a back row piece keeps you safer, but it also means there’s more inertia on what happens.” It is clear Richard is desperate for the relevant authorities in both Britain and Iran to put an end to this inertia, saying: “There’s absolutely a moral hazard issue around how you challenge and disincentivise hostage-taking, but I don’t think doing nothing and waiting for the other side to be reasonable – which is essentially UK policy – does anything other than put more of a burden on the families.”