This week, CFI Officer Bob Blackman MP wrote an article for ConservativeHome, asserting that Iran’s continued imprisonment of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a “blatant attempt by the Iranian regime to take the British foreign policy hostage to extort concessions and dictate term”, and that the UK must not concede.
The Conservative MP for Harrow East said that Tehran has put a “price tag” on Nazanin’s release of “over £300 million”; “cash that the regime in Iran desperately wants and needs to develop weapons, support terrorism and militias that will harm countless more lives asides from Nazanin’s”.
He asserted that Nazanin’s incarceration is a “high-stakes showdown”, which indicates that the Iranian regime “is so desperate that its leaders are willing to make headlines and risk action for cash”.
Mr Blackman made clear: “A British policy that does not yield to this extortion attempt is the only one that will break a cycle of kidnappings and apparent ransom that has been repeated since 1979”.
“By not giving into the Iranian government’s demands”, he underlined, “it will also make continuing to hold Nazanin a losing strategy”.
The Conservative MP said that this same policy of “holding firm in the face of extortion attempts that will fund terror against the UK and its allies should not stop at Nazanin’s case”, arguing that “the cost of rewarding Iran’s terror activities is more kidnapping, deadlier weapons, more terror, and also a far more dangerous UK”.
Read the full article here.
