But the debt negotiations are not linked to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case, James Cleverly says.
image copyrightFree Nazanin Campaign
The UK and Iran are in discussions over a £400m debt that the UK owes, a government minister has said – but the talks are not linked to the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The UK owes the money for failing to deliver tanks Iran bought in the 1970s.
British-Iranian national Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is in jail in Iran, believes she has been imprisoned as leverage for the debt.
Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said the talks were ongoing.
But he said it was “completely inappropriate” to link them to the detention of British dual nationals, saying: “They are separate issues.”
The case of Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe made headlines again in recent weeks after she was sentenced to another year in prison, just weeks after she reached the end of a five-year sentence. She was first jailed in Tehran in 2016 on spying charges, which she has always denied.
Her husband, Richard, maintains she is being used as a bargaining chip in the dispute over the unpaid debt, as well as leverage in talks over the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
On Sunday, Iranian state TV suggested the UK had paid the £400m debt – but the UK government said nothing had changed.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Foreign Office minister Mr Cleverly said: “The situation with regards to the… military contract from the 1970s which has dragged on for decades, those negotiations are ongoing. They have been for a long while, sadly, but they are ongoing.”
Asked if the talks were getting anywhere, Mr Cleverly said: “There’s a legal process tied up with this as well. Iran most recently stepped away from that legal process which has of course delayed things.
“We are looking at ways of resolving what has been a multi-decade long problem.
“The reports that we had over the weekend linking that work with the incarceration and the arbitrary detention of British dual nationals I think was completely inappropriate – they are separate issues, one massively predates the other.”
He said the imprisonment of dual nationals in Iran “should be unlinked to the multi-decade long dispute with regard to the tanks”.
Meanwhile, Tulip Siddiq – who is the MP representing 42-year-old Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from West Hampstead in London – tweeted: “People seem to be being fed a false narrative that the £400m in Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is a ransom. It is not. It is a historic debt that the courts (and the government) have confirmed the UK owes Iran.”
The UK government has repeatedly condemned Iran’s treatment of her – and on Sunday Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab used its strongest language to date when he said it “amounts to torture”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Mr Raab said Tehran was using her in “a cat-and-mouse game” for diplomatic leverage.
“Nazanin is held unlawfully, in my view, as a matter of international law. I think she’s being treated in the most abusive, tortuous way,” he said.
Richard Ratcliffe – who has not seen his wife since 2016 – said the family had not been updated but welcomed the reports on Iranian state TV over the long-running dispute as “a good sign”.
“My instinct is that it is actually a sign we are in the middle of negotiations rather than at the end of them,” he told the BBC.
“But we will keep our fingers crossed – for ourselves, and all the other families caught up in this.”
