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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will serve out her five-year prison sentence, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman has said.

Foreign Office minister Andrew Murrison had pressed Iran for the "urgent and unconditional release" of the British mum yesterday, during a visit to Iran to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

But Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, was quoted as saying by state media: "Mrs Zaghari is an Iranian. She has been convicted on security charges and is spending her sentence in prison.

"Iran does not recognise dual nationality."

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband Richard started a hunger strike outside the Iranian Embassy in London last week to draw attention to his wife's plight.

Last week Mr Ratcliffe urged Boris Johnson to “solve past mistakes” by helping to secure her release.

As Foreign Secretary in 2017, Mr Johnson wrongly said charity worker Nazanin had been training journalists in Iran.

His gaffe is believed to have worsened her sentence for spying.

(Image: PA)

Mr Mousavi was quoted saying in his statement: "We do not approve such measures..They are against

international conventions.

"If someone has a request, we advise them follow it through legal channels and let the Iranian embassy do its work."

In an email to Reuters, Mr Ratcliffe said his wife still faced a second court case and was being prevented from seeing their daughter Gabriella.

"I saw Minister Araqchi also accused me of blackmailing Iran by my hunger strike. Which is ironic since I am not the one who is holding an innocent person as diplomatic leverage," he said.

(Image: PA)

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was sentenced after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organisation that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and Reuters News.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe always insisted her 2016 visit to Tehran was for her daughter to meet her grandparents.

Last Tuesday, in the BBC's Tory leadership debate, Mr Johnson said his comments "didn’t, I think, make any difference" to the time she spent in jail.

Mr Johnson added: “If you point the finger at the UK, all you are doing is exculpating those who are truly responsible, which is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”

(Image: AFP/Getty Images) (Image: Handout)

But the following day, Mr Ratcliffe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Of course they had consequences.

"The main difference they had was, obviously, they enabled a propaganda campaign that was run against Nazanin."

Fears of a direct military confrontation between Washington and Tehran have risen sharply since Iran shot down a U.S. drone last week and President Donald Trump called off a retaliatory strike while bombers were in the air.