Liz Truss: We Owe Iran a Debt and Repaying It Is Now Our Priority

Liz Truss, British Foreign Secretary, announced on Wednesday, March 16, that paying Britain’s 400 million pound debt to Tehran and the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual national prisoner in Iran, are priorities for the British government.

Ms. Truss, in response to a Sky News correspondent’s question, without clarifying whether the debt has been paid to Iran or not, only stated that these two issues have been prioritized.

She further added: “We have clearly stated that this is a legitimate debt to Iran and we have been seeking ways to pay it.”

Her remarks come one day after Tulip Siddiq, a Member of Parliament close to Ms. Zaghari’s family, wrote in a tweet in Britain that Nazanin Zaghari had retrieved her passport after six years.

Ms. Siddiq also reported the presence of a British negotiating team in Tehran, which the British Foreign Secretary also confirmed without reference to details.

Unconfirmed reports have been circulated in the Persian-language cyberspace indicating that Britain’s 400 million pound debt to Iran has been paid.

Iranian state media reported in 2021, citing anonymous Iranian officials, that Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British citizen, would be released following payment of this debt.

The British government owes approximately 400 million pounds to Iran due to non-delivery of Chieftain tanks, the contract for which was signed over four decades ago between the Pahlavi government and the British government at the time.

Nazanin Zaghari, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran Airport at the end of her trip to Iran in April 2016, where she had gone to visit her family, on charges of “espionage” and was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Last year, despite the end of this dual national’s prison sentence, the Iranian government, by reopening a new case against her, sentenced Ms. Zaghari to another year in prison.

Source: Radio Farda