The case of British charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran since April, charged with scheming to enact the “soft overthrow” of the Iranian regime, and separated from her two-year-old daughter, should prompt a reconsideration of whether the UK should normalize relations with Iran, an editorial in The Telegraph, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, asserted on Sunday.

Calling the case “shocking,” the editorial pointed out that Zaghari-Ratcliffe is one of several dual-nationals who have been detained by Iran. “Many suspect that they represent ‘bargaining chips’ for a regime whose continued ruthlessness was demonstrated this week with the execution of a nuclear scientist who had previously taken refuge in America only to be lured home and hanged,” The Telegraph wrote.

Iran’s continued detention of dual-nationals in order to extract further concessions “will come as a rude awakening for those who thought that the bargaining was over once the nuclear deal had been signed.” Given Iran’s behavior, the newspaper rejected the opinion of those who wish to “upgrade Britain’s diplomatic representation in Iran” to having a full ambassador. “While the citizens of this country are being used as pawns by Iran,” the editorial concluded, “no such step should be contemplated.”

In Why Does Iran Keep Taking American Hostages?, published in the September 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine, Iran expert Ali Alfoneh described the regime’s hostage-taking as “a perfectly normal procedure and political practice in the Islamic Republic. That has been the case since the first day of the revolution and continues until today.”

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