“It has been horrendous”, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe told her husband during the 9am phone call, in which she disclosed that she had been given the harsh jail term.
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“The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have both raised her case with their counterparts in Iran and will continue to do so”, a spokesman said.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards earlier accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of having taken part in the “sedition movement” of widespread protests that followed the 2009 re-Electionof former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The five-year sentence, expected to be served in the high security Evin prison, was handed down by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court on Tuesday – the day after the United Kingdom and Iran upgraded Embassy relations.
Speaking to BBC News this evening, Ratcliffe spoke of his “shock and horror and disbelief” over the fact his wife has been given a five-year prison sentence.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe told her husband she preferred to stay asleep dreaming rather than “wake up each morning and remember where I am”. “Literally it is a punishment without a crime”.
Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment.
But Villa reiterated Friday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had no dealings with Iran in her role as a project coordinator with the foundation, which is the charitable arm of the worldwide news outlet Thomson Reuters.
Mr Ratcliffe added: “Why the Revolutionary Guard wishes to manoeuvre the judiciary to announce through me the sentence but not the charges I do not know”.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a 37-year-old charity worker who went to Iran for a holiday to visit family in March.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, who celebrated her second birthday in June without her mother or father, is being cared for by her grandparents in Tehran who speak little English.
Several Iranian dual nationals from the United States, Britain, Canada and France have been detained in the past few months on various charges, including espionage or collaborating with a hostile government.
Ms Villa said: “I want to reiterate my total support to Nazanin and her family in these awful circumstances and I ask the Iranian authorities to release her as soon as possible”.
“We continue to work very closely with Richard, the UK Foreign Office and the British authorities to find a resolution to this bad situation”, she added.
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She said she was “outraged” at the sentence, which she called “a very serious condemnation that comes without any charges or evidence being made public”.
