Conservationist detained since 2018 left behind when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori released

Morad Tahbaz, the British-Iranian-American citizen left behind last week when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were allowed to return home to the UK, has been taken from Evin prison to a hotel in Tehran after representations by the British and American governments, the Foreign Office has said.

The department added that it was lobbying the Iranian authorities at the highest levels to allow him to return to his Tehran home immediately as the Iranian government had previously committed to do.

Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe are free but other families in the west are waiting anxiously

Dotted across Europe and America are families of as many as 17 dual nationals still held in jail in Iran, watching nervously to find out whether their loved ones will follow Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on a plane to freedom, or be left behind.

Many fear their freedom is not being made a precondition of the west agreeing a nuclear deal with Iran in the talks nearing a climax in Vienna. Without an acknowledged debt to repay like the UK’s, some of their countries may have trouble striking deals, and that worries the families.

Relatives of the two Britons freed from Iran express gratitude as they head home

Iran’s release of the British-Iranian nationals Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been greeted with joy by their families, with Richard Ratcliffe saying: “Homecoming is a journey, not an arrival.”

Ratcliffe, who has been at the forefront of campaigning for his wife’s release since she was imprisoned in Tehran after going there to visit family, told broadcasters that there would have to be a recovery process, adding: “You can’t get back the time that’s gone.”