Does Boris Johnson think he is the victim?

The rational position of Boris Johnson and the Foreign Office is that there is no need for him to apologise for and correct his error in saying Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran to train journalists - in that Johnson is quite clear it is outrageous that she has been jailed there, and it would be even more outrageous to extend her sentence even if she had been training journalists (which she wasn’t, according to her spouse and the Reuters Foundation).

But this is to confuse what is rational with basic human kindness. Johnson has plainly deeply upset her husband - who believes that the foreign secretary has put his wife at great risk of having her prison sentence extended by another five years.

Even if Richard Ratcliffe is wrong - and since he has lived and breathed the case, there is no reason to assume he is wrong - it is weird that Johnson has not put his hands up, admitted his mistake and said sorry.

It is almost as though Johnson sees himself as the victim here, of misrepresentation, by the Labour Party, the British media, and the Iranian authorities.

But that cannot be true, can it? The foreign secretary cannot be letting his wounded pride get in the way of providing small comfort to a young mother deprived of liberty and contact with her despairing family.