THE husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe began a hunger strike outside the Foreign Office today to demand urgent action from the government over his wife’s continued detention in Iran.

Richard Ratcliffe is calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his ministers to publicly describe his wife as a hostage of the Iranian state and build this into ongoing negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme in order to end her ordeal.

He is also demanding that the government makes a commitment to settle an outstanding tank debt with Iran — something the PM promised to do in 2017 — and to take action against Iranian officials deemed responsible for his wife’s detention.

Amnesty International’s UK CEO Sacha Deshmukh said: “It’s so incredibly upsetting that it’s come to this.

“Like Richard, we’ve grown tired of hearing ministers saying they’re ‘doing all they can’ for Nazanin and other arbitrarily detained Britons in Iran — it doesn’t look like that to us, and it certainly hasn’t produced results.

“The time for promises is over, now we need action. The government should set out a clearly articulated strategy for how it intends to secure the release of Nazanin and other British nationals detained in Iran.”