Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed on false espionage charges in 2016 after being arrested during a visit to her family in Iran with her young daughter, Gabriella
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was falsely imprisoned in Iran for six years, has warned people not to be “naive” about the prospects of regime change in Iran after US-Israeli strikes killed the country’s Ayatollah.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national from north-west London, said there would be a precarious future for the country.
She also said she had dreaded planned strikes on Iran, as she hoped for peace.
She was speaking hours after the Iranian government confirmed the nation’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, had been killed in the air strikes. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also been reportedly killed.
Iran has retaliated by attacking nearby Gulf states.
Speaking at an event about Iran at Heath Street Baptist Church in north London on Sunday, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: “This is the beginning of folding a regime which has been systematically abusing its own citizens, but it’s not the end of it.
“I think it’s very naive to think that by removing (Khamenei) things are just going to be amazing, but I also understand that people can be quite excited about such an incident.”
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed on false espionage charges in 2016 after being arrested during a visit to her family in Iran with her young daughter, Gabriella.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe led a long campaign to raise awareness of her arrest and force the UK to attempt to strike a deal with Iran. They both took part in hunger strikes, including one by Mr Ratcliffe outside the Foreign Office.
His wife’s arrest and jailing were linked to a historic British debt owed to Iran for tank sales in 1979. She was released and returned to the UK in 2022.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: “What happened yesterday, I understand that none of us was expecting this.
“There was this threat of attack and war by Israel and America on Iran, but I personally didn’t think I would see this.
“I’m a peace-seeker, so in my heart I want peace for the world and I don’t want war at all.
“That’s me, because there is collateral damage when there is war, when we are thinking of war a human being is often collateral damage.”
She continued: “I think we are looking at a very uncertain future.
“We are looking at potentially, they are removing a lot of heads of states and people who are in the position of managing the military, some of the key components within the country, and as far as I know, they haven’t stopped doing so.”
Event organiser Parisa Amiri, a cardiologist, said while she was glad the ayatollah had been killed, she had wanted him to stand trial instead.
She also called US President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “heroes”.
Dr Amiri, who has been in the UK for 24 years, told the Press Association: “I was very very happy because (Khamenei) is dead, but I wanted him to be in a court where he can answer the questions about the people… especially people who have been slaughtered or killed… and I felt he needs to be killed in the hands of the people.
“I thought that was a very easy death for him.”
She added that for some Iranians, the possibility of overthrowing the regime meant the danger posed by the US and Israeli bombings to their homes was worth it.
Dr Amiri also called for the UK Government to seize Iranian assets in the UK and proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“We don’t look at this as a war, we look at it as a rescue,” she said.
“Imagine you think you may be killed this way or the other way, but there is one per cent chance that you can survive and start a new chapter in your life, that will be the war, rather than staying there and being slaughtered.”
She continued: “Trump and Bibi are our saviour, the heroes. That’s what it’s going to say in the history of the world. The diplomacy has just meant nothing.”
