Vida Mehrannia is trying to save her husband’s life. Iran is scheduled to put him to death within nine days — by May 21.

To Iran, the 50-year-old Ahmad Reza Jalali is a spy for Israel. To his colleagues, he is a respected physician specialized in disaster medicine, a most demanding field. To Mehrannia, he is a beloved husband.

“It’s a nightmare,” she told The Associated Press from Stockholm, where she lives with her 10-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter who have not seen their father in the six years since his arrest. “They want to sacrifice my husband.”

Mehrannia pins her fading hopes on Jalali’s Swedish citizenship and Stockholm’s attempts to push for his release. The extent of those efforts is unclear, though the Swedish foreign minister called her Iranian counterpart last week and, along with the European Union, demanded Jalali be released.

But it appears that Jalali’s very ties to Sweden are what landed him in an Iranian prison.