Iran is holding Iranian-British citizens for negotiation

Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was working as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was tried and eventually jailed in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, where she spent time in solitary confinement and struggled with her mental and physical health.And Iran refuses to give her her freedom to return to her family after 18 months of patience with injustice imprisonment have passed.

According to her husband, Iranian officials told Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe that her detention would end when Britain settled a four-decade-old debt of 400 million pounds, now worth about $550 million, related to a failed arms deal with the shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979.

Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to normalize what they call hostage diplomacy with the West by arresting people on trumped-up charges and then using them as political bargaining chips. Iran has denied those accusations and argued that its dealings with Iranian citizens like Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe are a domestic matter.