Thank you. It's a good question.
My sense of it is that they're not actually asking for something new. We were very surprised by the prisoner swap offer. The prisoner swap offer was made in the States and was specifically to an American audience, invoking Nazanin's name, but the prisoner on the other side was held by the States, effectively. It was then clarified that it was an offer for the U.S.
My reading of all of it is that it was in the end a way of getting American attention, and the president's attention specifically, to say, “Listen, we know that you are someone who likes to bring home Americans. We have some Americans and we're willing to do a deal. Don't send that aircraft carrier.” In layman's terms, that's what I think was going on.
What the foreign ministry spokesperson in Iran signalled afterwards was that they were still interested in other situations. As I said, Nazanin's second court case was reopened two days ago to signal that they're dissatisfied with something. You are absolutely right that U.K. policy is not to do prisoner swaps and not to endanger its citizens in that way. That would be true for many countries. One of the two-tier conversations we have with the British foreign office is to say, “There's an industry here that you need to find a way to challenge and to stop, and to stop for the long term. Then, there are also real families and real people that you need to find a way to bring home.”
You have to do both. I'm not saying it's an easy job, but you have to do both. It's not okay to just wait and pretend it's not happening, which in hard-nosed policy terms would make sense. You have to call out the Iranian regime and challenge them that it is not okay to use people as leverage.
In fairness to the current foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, that's what he's been doing, and he's been quite clear. He was very strong and critical of foreign minister Zarif's offer. We'll see how things move.