Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has UK passport returned, MP says.
Discussion
julian64 said:
Murph7355 said:
On the debt, as I've noted before, we should have returned the funds the second we knew we weren't going ahead with the arms deal once the Shah was overthrown (or delivered spiked tanks 
). I kind of understand why we didn't/wouldn't have wanted to. But it's not what I would have done. Pay it and wash your hands of the new regime. Then apply sanctions from a clean start point.
I can at least see where you are coming from, but if you were 100% sure that the new government would use the money to enslave its citizens or wage war/develop nuclear weapons under an unstable autocrat.). I kind of understand why we didn't/wouldn't have wanted to. But it's not what I would have done. Pay it and wash your hands of the new regime. Then apply sanctions from a clean start point. Would you still feel okay and hand the money straight back? If so I respect your point of view, but I wouldn't share it.
That cash wouldn't have seen them any closer to going nuclear than they are now. And we give money to unstable (or at the very least, unsavoury) autocrats even now (cough Saudi cough).
Give them back their own cash, then offset it by hitting them with harder sanctions
We've been meddling in that region for too long. Sadly I don't see this being the end of that.
Nazanin got to have her say with Johnson today - I'd guess she was polite in not holding back.....!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61441631
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61441631
Liokault said:
She pedals self loathing, it’s not meant to be taken literally, she had clearly, in her mind and that of her readers, split the nation into the worthy who think like her, and the unworthy who think other than her.
It’s the modern way.
It’s the modern way.
she's a newspaper columnist; it's her job to annoy people and you're clearly demonstrating that she's on top of her trade.hidetheelephants said:
she's a newspaper columnist; it's her job to annoy people and you're clearly demonstrating that she's on top of her trade.Newspaper columnists should be reporting the news and writing considered pieces. Not trying to be antagonistic.
If the vast majority of them disappeared overnight, the world would be a significantly better place.
Murph7355 said:
Unfortunately that seems to be what newspapers want of their columnists these days. It and they are a pox on society.
Newspaper columnists should be reporting the news and writing considered pieces. Not trying to be antagonistic.
If the vast majority of them disappeared overnight, the world would be a significantly better place.
She generally covers politicians a bit of sport and showbiz. She's got a killer turn of phrase and the current crop of idiots in politics and showbiz give a rich seam of material.Newspaper columnists should be reporting the news and writing considered pieces. Not trying to be antagonistic.
If the vast majority of them disappeared overnight, the world would be a significantly better place.
She is on fire at the moment. Very funny, unsparing and perceptive. She's writing for a left leaning newspaper but I think her main targets are the pompous and hypocritical wherever they dwell on the political spectrum.
Seems for many on this thread her only "crime" was being a bit left leaning and not being grateful enough to the Government.
Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
Liokault said:
Randy Winkman said:
Liokault said:
Randy Winkman said:
Mark Benson said:
b
hstewie said:
hstewie said:TurboTerrific9 said:
I'm surprised at the level of hate there is for this woman just for the fact that she isn't gushing over the process that freed her.
Jeremy Hunt's comments are, I think, important for context.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60832188
You're surprised at the level of hate for a woman who sat in a Press Conference next to a Labour MP (who happens to be her constituency MP) and didn't gush with praise about the Conservative Government who have been in power the entire duration of the six years and five Foreign Secretaries she's spent in detention?Jeremy Hunt's comments are, I think, important for context.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60832188
It's absolute catnip for the "be grateful" types.
Good opinion piece here (and despite liking the Guardian for news I don't say that too often about their opinion pieces).
Nazanin is grateful, but is she grateful enough? I don’t know but the trolls will tell us
I saw who'd written it and knew immediately; it will be about how awful the British people are, and will not say a word about Iran.
And I was entirely correct.
I'm not surprised you like the piece though, it completely chimes with your wierd compulsion of telling us how awful we all are.
I think it's a good article. It just draws attention to the fact that some people's weird compulsion when a women gets let out of jail after years apart from her small child is to take offence rather than just be happy for her.
« To Britain, where a woman who hasn’t said a word for six years is apparently talking too much. »
It’s the modern way.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Seems for many on this thread her only "crime" was being a bit left leaning and not being grateful enough to the Government.
Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
It's not about "not being grateful enough", it's about being utterly ungrateful.Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
She put herself in the predicament. When in Iran, on her dual nationality, she was an Iranian citizen. She knew what the country was like.
There is no logical basis to suggest, let alone confirm, Johnson's words made any difference whatsoever, as we have discussed on the threads on her before. The only govt action that made any difference at all was coughing up the 400m.
My sympathy registers at about the same level as the plum who got arrested by the Russians for poking around near their space port recently, or those who get arrested for drug smuggling in places like Thailand and then don't like the s
tholes they get locked up in. In the overall ranks of "what govt should spend its money on", this sort of thing (individuals putting themselves in unnecessary jeopardy) is pretty close to the bottom for me.
He apologised to MPs for his mistake over what he said about what she was doing there.
Shame he couldn't bring himself to do so to her face.
Not doing the loop again over whether a Foreign Secretary publicly stating she was in Iran doing something that he later acknowledged he was mistaken in saying is somehow supposed to have benefitted her situation as it's totally bloody obvious it didn't.
Shame he couldn't bring himself to do so to her face.
Not doing the loop again over whether a Foreign Secretary publicly stating she was in Iran doing something that he later acknowledged he was mistaken in saying is somehow supposed to have benefitted her situation as it's totally bloody obvious it didn't.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: He apologised to MPs for his mistake over what he said about what she was doing there.
Shame he couldn't bring himself to do so to her face.
Not doing the loop again over whether a Foreign Secretary publicly stating she was in Iran doing something that he later acknowledged he was mistaken in saying is somehow supposed to have benefitted her situation as it's totally bloody obvious it didn't.
An apology to Nazanin from Johnson would be pretty worthless, just symbolic..Shame he couldn't bring himself to do so to her face.
Not doing the loop again over whether a Foreign Secretary publicly stating she was in Iran doing something that he later acknowledged he was mistaken in saying is somehow supposed to have benefitted her situation as it's totally bloody obvious it didn't.
The words that come out of his mouth rarely help anyone's cause, not even his own, and certainly didn't help Nazanin....
Murph7355 said:
It's not about "not being grateful enough", it's about being utterly ungrateful.
She put herself in the predicament. When in Iran, on her dual nationality, she was an Iranian citizen. She knew what the country was like.
Agreed. She has chosen to retain Iranian nationality rather than revoke it but when the sShe put herself in the predicament. When in Iran, on her dual nationality, she was an Iranian citizen. She knew what the country was like.
t hits the fan wants her adopted country to bail her out..
"As a dual national you cannot get diplomatic help from the British government when you are in the other country where you hold citizenship."
https://www.gov.uk/dual-citizenship
irc said:
Murph7355 said:
It's not about "not being grateful enough", it's about being utterly ungrateful.
She put herself in the predicament. When in Iran, on her dual nationality, she was an Iranian citizen. She knew what the country was like.
Agreed. She has chosen to retain Iranian nationality rather than revoke it but when the sShe put herself in the predicament. When in Iran, on her dual nationality, she was an Iranian citizen. She knew what the country was like.
t hits the fan wants her adopted country to bail her out..
"As a dual national you cannot get diplomatic help from the British government when you are in the other country where you hold citizenship."
https://www.gov.uk/dual-citizenship
Yet, when released by the UK tax payers coughing up £400 million to pay off the Iranian regime, she is ungrateful and apparently unrepentant that, she alone, placed HMG in an impossible position.
I suspect the FS at the time (BJ) spoke the truth when he should have kept schtum, but the truth will eventually be revealed, either by the CS or the MSM, so he was in between a rock and a hard place, and lies will be less easily forgotten.
Is/was she naive? I don't believe so.
oddman said:
Murph7355 said:
Unfortunately that seems to be what newspapers want of their columnists these days. It and they are a pox on society.
Newspaper columnists should be reporting the news and writing considered pieces. Not trying to be antagonistic.
If the vast majority of them disappeared overnight, the world would be a significantly better place.
She generally covers politicians a bit of sport and showbiz. She's got a killer turn of phrase and the current crop of idiots in politics and showbiz give a rich seam of material.Newspaper columnists should be reporting the news and writing considered pieces. Not trying to be antagonistic.
If the vast majority of them disappeared overnight, the world would be a significantly better place.
She is on fire at the moment. Very funny, unsparing and perceptive. She's writing for a left leaning newspaper but I think her main targets are the pompous and hypocritical wherever they dwell on the political spectrum.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Seems for many on this thread her only "crime" was being a bit left leaning and not being grateful enough to the Government.
Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
Totally agree, the political infighting between various departments (civil service and military), which went on since 2017, was why the debt wasn't paid and that was why NR was held for so long.Do a few years in Iran with that chump of a Foreign Secretary landing you in it even more and I wonder how grateful you'd really be to them for eventually securing your release.
It also makes sense, when you know the reasons and actions behind the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the part which the UK/US played in it. The US/UK had a "plan", but the "law of unintended consequences" once again went totally wrong.
How many times has that happened.
andyA700 said:
Totally agree, the political infighting between various departments (civil service and military), which went on since 2017, was why the debt wasn't paid and that was why NR was held for so long......
Oh do behave.What about 1979 to 2017?
The debt, and the way the Iranian govt operated were known for decades. NR will have been more than fully aware of these things (more than), and yet chose to travel there as an Iranian citizen. But hey, it's all govt's fault from 2017....
Murph7355 said:
andyA700 said:
Totally agree, the political infighting between various departments (civil service and military), which went on since 2017, was why the debt wasn't paid and that was why NR was held for so long......
Oh do behave.What about 1979 to 2017?
The debt, and the way the Iranian govt operated were known for decades. NR will have been more than fully aware of these things (more than), and yet chose to travel there as an Iranian citizen. But hey, it's all govt's fault from 2017....
Iran is a lovely place to visit, the people are great, the food wonderful, the historical sites awesome.
For anyone wishing to visit the country, a word to the wise. Make sure you don't have any baggage which will come back to haunt you. Make sure that you don't attend any demonstrations against the Iranian government in the UK, or worse still, give an interview to UK press saying less than pleasant things about the Iranian government.
biggbn said:
How predictable, another PH thread that essentially says 'it was her own fault, she was asking for it'.
No. I am asking why as an Iranian citizen in Iran she expected the UK govt to help her? The rules are clear. A dual nationality citizen is not a UK citizen when in the other country she holds nationality for.There is presumably a good reason the UK has this rule.
The Iranian govt are the villains here. It was nothing to do with the UK govt and I don't think they should pay ransoms for foreign citizens which she was while in Iran.
irc said:
biggbn said:
How predictable, another PH thread that essentially says 'it was her own fault, she was asking for it'.
No. I am asking why as an Iranian citizen in Iran she expected the UK govt to help her? The rules are clear. A dual nationality citizen is not a UK citizen when in the other country she holds nationality for.There is presumably a good reason the UK has this rule.
The Iranian govt are the villains here. It was nothing to do with the UK govt and I don't think they should pay ransoms for foreign citizens which she was while in Iran.
This is a difficult, sensitive case and I think it is much more nuanced than simply saying she has dual nationality so did not deserve the help of our country. Jeremy Hunt, amongst others, certainly seem to feel she deserved the help, and it shoukd have happened sooner.
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