In a development so predictable it could have been scripted by a committee of disillusioned tortoises, the Iranian judiciary has rejected the appeal of a British couple languishing in their gilded cage. The couple, who presumably thought a jaunt through theocratic jurisprudence would be a spiffing way to spend their retirement, now face the prospect of swapping their twin set of pearls for a matching set of prison stripes. The Foreign Office, in a display of urgency normally reserved for the last packet of digestives at a church fete, has ‘escalated consular intervention’.
This means, in layman’s terms, that a junior minister has been sent to make a series of increasingly desperate phone calls while polishing his monocle. The whole affair has the air of a particularly tedious game of diplomatic charades, with Iran gesturing vaguely at ‘judicial independence’ and Britain pretending not to notice the blindfold and the firing squad. Meanwhile, the couple’s relatives are advised to write letters in large print and avoid mentioning the word ‘gin’.
The real scandal, of course, is not that two people are unjustly detained, but that anyone still believes a holiday in Iran is a sensible alternative to Skegness.
