On The Fate Of Julian Assange

Tuesday, 21 June 2022
Article: Gordon Campbell

Has swapping Scott Morrison for Anthony Albanese made any discernible difference to Australia’s relations with the US, China, the Pacific and New Zealand ? Not so far. For example: Albanese has asked for more time to “consider” his response to New Zealand’s long running complaints about the so called “501” deportations back to this country. Really? He needs more time to figure out a response? OK, but the clock is ticking.

The Julian Assange situation is a lot more urgent. Assange’s deportation to the United States has now been okayed by the British courts and also - crucially – by its government. At any moment, Assange could be on a plane and headed for a US prison. He is facing the prospect of 175 years in jail.

And what is Albanese doing to stop an Australian citizen from being railroaded for life into a foreign jail - as his punishment for alerting the world to US war crimes? Pathetically, Albanese has been saying that he won’t be rushed into carrying out “megaphone” diplomacy when it comes to interceding with the US on behalf of Assange. A megaphone? Hardly. Over the past ten years successive Australian governments haven’t said a critical word in public about the persecution of Assange, or pressed his case in Washington, or argued that he shouldn’t be being prosecuted at all, and certainly not by a US kangaroo court.

At this late hour, surely the time for “quiet diplomacy” is over. Albanese should be banging the table, and protesting the injustice of treating an Aussie citizen so outrageously – as he would be doing if anyone else but the US was the jailer.

After all, it would be uncontroversial for Albanese to be pointing out that Chelsea Manning (who forwarded the sensitive material at issue to Wikileaks) received a presidential pardon in 2015 from an Obama administration in which Joseph Biden was then serving as vice-President. The obvious double standard would suggest that the real motive behind the treatment of Assange is to intimidate the media into silence.

At the time though, the Obama administration was savvy enough to realise that charging Assange would re-open the can of worms about what the US had been up to around the world. Potentially, it could also mean prosecuting major US news organizations for publishing similar material and – if so - their constitutionally protected free speech rights would almost certainly torpedo any such cases brought to trial.

This fear of setting some kind of precedent about media censorship is still Assange’s best hope of freedom. If Albanese could ever pluck up enough courage to ask, Biden could package any release deal for Assange – who has already been severely punished - as a gesture of gratitude to Australia, for its years of dutiful service to the United States.

Maybe that’s how things will eventually pan out. Yet currently, the risk remains too great. All along, complacency has been allowed to prevail. For years, it was blithely assumed that Assange was exaggerating the risk of him being extradited to the United States. Yet now, that’s where we are.

If ever there was a time for megaphone diplomacy (and for the belated display of a backbone by Australia) then this is it. No doubt, Albanese should be using whatever diplomatic back channels are available to him. Yet that shouldn’t be stopping him from going public and defending the principles (press freedom, public interest journalism etc etc) that are at stake here.

Boris Johnson also used to claim that his ‘softly softly’ approach was the best way to handle the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British citizen left to rot for years in an Iranian prison. But all that the alleged quiet diplomacy did was to prolong her imprisonment, while concealing the failings of previous British governments that had contributed to her incarceration. Once it becomes inaudible, quiet diplomacy looks more like a signal that don’t worry, we won’t be rocking the boat.

Assange and the public interest

Assange’s alleged “crime” was to publish on Wikileaks a trove of documents and cables obtained by Chelsea Manning, a US soldier stationed in Iraq. The material included evidence of war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diplomatic cables contained hundreds of examples of US diplomats being engaged in clandestine activities without the knowledge or consent of the public at home, or in the countries affected. The public interest served by revealing such activities should be obvious. Revealing the atrocities, lies and deceptions of the powerful is what journalism exists to do, in a free society.

Uniquely though, Assange has been prosecuted for doing so, as the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in 2019:

For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges under the Espionage Act against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This is a direct assault on the First Amendment.

The Columbia Journalism Review made the same point more than a year ago:

…This case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity. While many of the charges [contained in the Assange indictment] involve conspiracy or aiding and abetting, three counts are based on “pure publication”—the argument that Assange broke the law just by posting classified documents on the Internet.

And furthermore:

Read literally, the Espionage Act criminalizes the solicitation, receipt, and publication of any government secret, not just the names of informants. The Justice Department has long taken the position that it can prosecute the act of publishing classified information. But it has not done so, until now, because of concerns that it would open a Pandora’s box of media censorship.

With Assange, Pandora's box has now been opened. If he can be prosecuted for publishing leaked information – on the grounds it was “stolen” and because the disclosures (in the state’s opinion) damaged “national security” then any other journalist is at risk of the same fate for doing their job.

Now that the British government and courts have cleared a path for Assange to be extradited, the precedent cannot avoid having a chilling effect on any media investigations into government wrong-doing, given that the documents proving it will almost certainly belong to the state. The evidence will always have been “stolen” and “national security” is a conveniently elastic term.

Governments, of course, can always claim that what the public may be interested in isn’t always in their best interest to know. That’s why the Assanges of the world are so valuable, because they’re willing to take the risks involved in challenging the presumptions of the powerful. One doesn’t have to like Assange personally, to see the value of his work, and the injustice of his treatment.

Footnote One: One of the repeated red herrings in the Assange case is that he allegedly published unredacted data that put peoples’ lives at risk. As Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s legal adviser pointed out on RNZ years ago, no one has ever been able to point to anyone who has suffered harm from what Wikileaks published. Moreover:

“That material had already been published online by other publications as a result of a security breach by the Guardian newspaper. The decision by WikiLeaks to publish that material unredacted was because it was already circulating online.” Robinson [said]people need to be reminded of the importance of what WikiLeaks revealed, including the war crimes of US military shooting down journalists and civilians in Iraq – which had been covered up. The Iraq and Afghanistan war logs also showed civilian deaths far higher than originally thought and included evidence of torture and war crimes.

Carole Cadwalladr and the public interest

And now for the good news. In a different corner of the British justice system, the values of public interest journalism have recently been upheld in a crucial test case. Earlier this month, the British journalist Carole Cadwalladr won the libel case brought against her by British businessman Arron Banks.

Banks, a key funder of the Brexit Leave campaign, had sued Cadwalladr for claiming – both in a TED talk and in a tweet – that Banks had been lying about the extent of his dealings with the Russian state. The whole judgement is well worth reading – but its core conclusions are that (a) at the time of the TED talk, Cadwalladr had solid public interest grounds for what she said, and (b) once the public interest defence “fell away” in April 2020 (after the UK Electoral Commission found no campaign fundings laws had been broken) there was no evidence that Banks’ reputation had suffered subsequent harm.

Banks’ initial claim had been that his “sole” contact with the Russians had been “a boozy six-hour lunch.” This claim had been challenged by Cadwalladr, and the ruling by Justice Steyn painstakingly dissected the evidence that there were at least four such meetings. There could possibly have been more. The possibility of a quid pro quo from the Russians in terms of favourable business deals for Banks was also argued before the court.

Based on her investigation, Ms Cadwalladr had reasonable grounds to believe that (i) Mr Banks had been offered ‘sweetheart’ deals by the Russian government in the period running up to the EU referendum, although she had seen no evidence he had entered into any such deals; and (ii) Mr Banks’s financial affairs, and the source of his ability to make the biggest political donations in UK history, were opaque.”

[Justice] Steyn said Cadwalladr’s belief at the time of the Ted talk was bolstered by the fact that the Electoral Commission had announced it had reasonable grounds to suspect that Banks was not the true source of the £8m loans/donations to Leave.EU and that the National Crime Agency was investigating the matter.

Cadwalladr’s expressions of relief and her thoughts on the significance of her victory are available here. Others have weighed in on the importance of her triumph:

The Observer editor, Paul Webster, and the Guardian News & Media editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, welcomed the verdict as “an important victory for free speech and public-interest reporting”, highlighting the online trolling, abuse and harassment Cadwalladr had faced. “We believe this case was an example of a powerful wealthy person targeting an individual journalist for their work,” they said. “Carole Cadwalladr’s victory in this case is an important step in defending the rights of journalists to report in the public interest.”

Fine. Now let's apply the same beliefs about the crucial importance of public interest journalism - and the same compassion – to the case of Julian Assange.

Footnote Two: This year has been a deadly one for journalism globally. Those killed while doing their work have included the leading Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (murdered by the Israeli forces in occupied Palestine ) and the British journalist Dom Philips.

Philips, along with his expert adviser on indigenous affairs were murdered in a remote part of Brazil while he was investigating the extent of illegal fishing by poor fishermen (paid by international firms) within an Amazonian reserve supposedly set aside for indigenous tribes.

At last count, 22 other journalists have been killed in the course of their work since the beginning of January. Ten reporters have died while covering the war in Ukraine, and the rest were killed in countries ranging from Haiti, to Chad, Mexico, India, Myanmar and Chile.

© Scoop Media

Kuwait City and its Fragments

by Nazanin Shahrokni and Spyros A. Sofos
April 5th, 2022

A market worker walking in front of a wall full of graffiti in Kuwait City. Source: Francisco Anzola

Originally a small fishing and pearl diving settlement, Kuwait City became a key point in the East India Company sea routes to India and the east coast of Africa in the 18th century. The affluence brought about by the discovery of oil in the 20th century set in motion a dramatic transformation of the Persian Gulf emirate and Kuwait City whose population rose from 62,627 in 1950 to a staggering 3,115,000 in 2021. Kuwait’s gas and oil extraction industry and the service economy that emerged, relied on the import of foreign workers whose number increased dramatically over the years from nearly 31 percent of the population in 1957, to 70 percent in 2022. In response to a demographic shift of such magnitude, Kuwait’s ruling family had to reimagine and rebuild Kuwait City. Central in the redevelopment was the vision of a modern administrative and commercial centre whose periphery expanded rapidly towards the desert surrounding it. In this periphery, new residential suburbs housed the inhabitants who were granted citizenship. Yet, the vision of a modern Kuwait City had little space for those indigenous and migrant populations whose presence and labour were crucial to the materialisation of a new Kuwait City.

Differential inclusion and exclusion processes have fragmented Kuwait City’s population and shape how these fragments inhabit, relate to and experience it. This coupling of fragmentation and inequality has created a dysfunctional urban space, lacking usable public spaces or adequate public transport, marred by high levels of motorisation and environmental degradation. The more attention one turns to the city’s fragments, the more extended the capacity for building a polyphonic city that is not only more inclusive but also efficient.

Kuwait City’s Social Ecology

According to the latest estimates, just under 1.3 million of the emirate’s population are Kuwaitis, 1.2 million are citizens of other Arab countries, approximately 1.5 million are Asian expatriates, 70,000 come from Africa and close to 40,000 from Europe, North and South America and Australia. Yet, this diversity is but one facet of a much more complex urban ecology marked by inequality and segregation.

Tensions between sedentary and nomadic populations is apparent in the form of a hierarchical distinction between the hadar – settled Sunni urban elite – and the badu – Bedouin tribes that used to live a nomadic life in the badiya (desert) surrounding the citadel. The procedure for acquiring citizenship after independence meant that the badu were granted a ‘lesser’ citizenship: apart from the differential political rights that separated them from the hadar, unlike the latter who were relocated to the al-manãtiq al-numüdhajiyya (fifteen model ‘inner’ residential suburbs inside the four ring roads), the badu were not offered housing until the early 1980s when they were moved to modest-sized housing in outlying areas (al-manãtiq al-khãrijiyya) effectively lacking access to the city centre, its administrative services and amenities.

Another significant divide is the one between citizens and the bidun (without [citizenship]). Originating largely in itinerant groups whose lives were divided inside and outside Kuwait’s historical borders that failed to register or meet the exclusive citizenship criteria, the bidun became effective ‘outsiders’ excluded from the benefits of citizenship, not allowed to own property, denied access to free education, relying on precarious, low status jobs, or in the best case joining the low ranks of the military, police or civil service. Social outcasts, they became spatially externalised, banished to settlements in the outskirts of Kuwait City such as Tayma, Sulaibiyya and Ahmadi. These sha’biyya (popular housing), housing most of Kuwait’s 100,000 bidun, have recently become the locus of protests over their exclusion from rights enjoyed by citizens such as free healthcare and education.

The sharpest divide, though, separates citizens and expatriates – mostly lower paid workers in the oil industry, construction, services and domestic sectors. Out of the 1.77 million legally resident expatriates, over 50 percent, roughly 845,000, are illiterate or have basic education. However, statistics point to an asymmetrical distribution between this large segment of Kuwait’s population taking the most menial and vulnerable jobs and a small, highly educated migrant workforce hailing from developed countries and occupying desirable, high-earning positions in healthcare, business and finance.

Consecutive governments, disregarding Kuwait’s dependence on the contribution of migrant labour, represent them as a demographic threat and vow to reduce their numbers. Unskilled migrant workers’ lives have been subjected to restrictions that limit even their basic freedoms. They have been expendable and replaceable, and vilified in the Kuwaiti media on account of their lack of education, ‘their limited health culture,’ and, ironically, their ‘lack of direct contact with mainstream Kuwaiti society’– which is largely the product of design on the part of the authorities.

The kafala (sponsorship) system requires migrants to have a Kuwaiti sponsor (kafeel). In a highly regulated labour market, kafala empowers employers disproportionately and shields them from responsibility in cases of withholding pay, forced labour or abuse as they have the right to petition the immigration authorities to cancel workers’ legal residency, effectively giving them power over the immigration status of those they sponsor. This vulnerability, combined with their precarious presence in Kuwait, strengthens representations of foreign workers as not only outsiders but also inferior. This inferiority is reflected in and further consolidates spatial segregation policies and practices, which are gendered in character: many male workers live in temporary housing near project sites or in higher density residential areas and in the suburbs of Ḥawallī and Al-Sālimiyyah, in cramped rented housing. They are often targeted by government operations such as the 2019 ‘Be Assured’ campaign aimed to remove unmarried or unaccompanied male migrants – so-called ‘bachelors’ – from urban residential areas that left many homeless. Female domestic workers, on the other hand, live with Kuwaiti families in residential neighbourhoods not always served by bus networks as the preference for private transport among Kuwaitis has influenced public transport planning. Their mobility is thus hampered by the cost of taxis given their low income or depends on their employers as the relative lack of leisure and retail infrastructures in residential areas necessitates longer trips.

Despite a tradition of women’s activism, women are often seen as ‘out of place’ in streets, parks, malls and public transport – and are a target of harassment as grassroots initiatives such as the Lan Asket (I will not be silent) Instagram campaign seem to confirm. Patriarchal notions of ‘honour’ curtail women’s freedom of movement and the gendered character of the public/private divide make large swathes of Kuwait City unsafe for them, resulting in gendered geographies of fear. Furthermore, female migrant workers, especially those employed in domestic settings, often experience physical abuse.

The pacifying effects of the state’s welfare provision and the sense of privilege afforded to the citizens, thus, rests on a second distinction between ‘deserving’ insiders and ‘undeserving’ outsiders – bidun and foreign resident labourers while gender, along other social markers of difference, intersects and leaves its own imprint on experiencing the city.

Urban Citizenship: A Bottom-Up Approach

A productive way of looking at the current divides and dysfunctionalities of life in Kuwait is to focus on the city and life in it, especially as the latter is the locus where inequalities have been inscribed in tangible, material ways. Alongside the multiple dividing lines running through Kuwait City, the rapid urbanisation has resulted in the breakdown of traditional forms of solidarity and organisation based on neighbourhoods (firjãn) and tribal kinship structures. This fragmentation and atomisation of city dwellers empowered the state and allowed it to shape the city according to the modernising vision of the ruling elite.

Yet, those populating the urban space rewrite the scripts of living in it in ways that subvert dominant visions and assert different, often splintered visualisations of the right to the city, and acts of ‘(re)assembling’ and reconnecting the urban, of creating their own spatial stories. They reconfigure and claim the city through spatial practices from below, engaging in place-making processes by making communal gardens in disused plots of lands, setting up alternative and inclusive diwanniyat at the seaside – shared spaces where the slow experience of working, living and playing with others unfolds (Amin and Thrift, 2007, p. 137). Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion in Kuwait City seeks to draw inspiration from such instances/micro-contexts of rewriting the city from below and building a sense of urban citizenship, of starting to think creatively about how this way of ‘planning through community’, to paraphrase Rose (1996), can result in sustainable public spaces and inclusive urban design.



About the author

Nazanin Shahrokni
Nazanin Shahrokni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE where she is programme director of the MSc Gender and Gender Research. She is PI of the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. Nazanin is author of the award-winning book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020) and a member of the International Sociological Association Executive Board. Her research focuses on the study of feminist geographies, feminist theories of the state, urban governance, gender segregation and gendered mobility. She tweets at @ShahrokniN

Spyros Sofos
Spyros Sofos is based at the LSE Middle East Centre and is Research Officer at the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. His latest book is Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) while his research focuses on populism, collective action, polarisation and conflict, and urban politics with particular emphasis on Turkey and the MENA region. He is lead editor of openDemocracy’s #rethinkingpopulism project and leads the Lebanon element of the Swedish Institute 'Co-design for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Urban Spaces' project. He tweets at @spyrosasofos

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Britain still can’t stand a brown woman speaking truth to power

Perspectives
Alia Waheed
28 Mar, 2022

Not even six years of being imprisoned and tortured in Iran has saved Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from racist and misogynistic attacks upon her return. She should have been applauded for calling out the UK government’s failures, writes Alia Waheed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe rightly called out the UK government's failures during her imprisonment. [GETTY]

Just as how black women have to contend with the angry black woman trope, brown women from the Middle East and Asian sub-continent face the meek, submissive victim stereotype.

When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe criticised the UK government upon her return from six years of imprisonment in Iran, she strayed from the script.

At a time when Nazanin should have been home, finally tucking her daughter into bed, she had to face the media, hungry for a soundbite.

Boy, did they get one.

When her husband thanked the current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, Nazanin did not. "I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years. How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?" she rightly asked. All the while, admirably remaining composed and dignified- something you wouldn’t expect from anyone who has experienced the intolerable conditions she has lived through.

''Many bigots commented that if she had been in Iran, she wouldn’t have been able to say what she did. Except she isn’t in Iran anymore, she’s back home in a country that proclaims to be a defender of freedom of speech and civil liberties.''

Within hours the hashtags #sendherback and #ungratefulcow were trending on Twitter with right-wing keyboard warriors accusing her of effectively biting the hand that freed her. Nazanin was on trial again, but this time it was a trial by social media because she dared to criticise the government’s long delay in securing her freedom.

Let’s not beat around the bush, the real reason she faced such vitriol is because she is a brown woman of Middle Eastern decent. She is considered part of the population normally left to drown on boats in the channel, not a strong and outspoken voice against human rights abuses and the UK government’s failures.

Nazanin was caught in the crosshairs of racism and misogyny. Women’s rights, it seems are selective, especially when it comes to women of colour. What a message to send during women’s history month in particular.

Brown girls are not supposed to be the angry ones, we are conditioned to believe that we are victims who silently endure the oppression dealt to us by our so-called backward communities. We are supposed to be seen and not heard, apart from in gratitude to our white saviours for saving us from our own brown, misogynist menfolk.

RELATED

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s homecoming should inspire action

Perspectives

Sonya Sceats

Many bigots commented that if she had been in Iran, she wouldn’t have been able to say what she did. Except she isn’t in Iran anymore, she’s back home in a country that proclaims to be a defender of freedom of speech and civil liberties. She had every right to say what she did. She should be celebrated for refusing to be a hypocrite and daring to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Anybody who is familiar with the details of her case will know her comments were completely justified. Nazanin, a dual British-Iranian citizen who worked for the Thomas Reuters Foundation charity was wrongly arrested on spying charges, something which she has always denied.

She missed out on the first six years of her daughter's life because of a catalogue of blunders by a string of foreign secretaries including Boris Johnson who blurted out that she was “simply teaching people journalism.” Except she wasn’t.

His ill-thought out remarks were an “inverted pyramid of piffle,” but were nevertheless weaponised in the Iranian state media and cited by the Iranian judiciary as evidence that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime.” as usual, he got away with his faux pas while Nazanin didn’t.

His off the cuff remarks also handily obscured the real reason why she was languishing in prison for years - a dispute over the repayment of an acknowledged historic debt over a cancelled arms deal. Nazanin was paying the price for a 40-year-old dispute which started when she was three.

Nazanin was an inconvenient truth for the government, who was supposed to be brushed under the carpet. It was left to another brown Muslim woman, her local MP Tulip Siddiqui who tirelessly campaigned by her husband’s side for Nazanin’s release.

Her agonising years in captivity came to an end because the Tories decided they may need Iranian oil.

Yes she was wronged by the Iranian government, but she was wronged by the British government too. Accountability does not need to be rationed after all, and her case is one of so many failures by political leaders who should have acted better.

It is not her job to make Boris Johnson and Liz Truss feel good about themselves, and she is right not to let them off the hook. Nazanin addressing those facts is important to the preservation and defence of all our rights and freedoms.

Alia Waheed is a freelance journalist specialising in issues affecting Asian women in the UK and the Indian subcontinent.

Follow her on Twitter: @AliaWaheed

UK
Anoosheh Ashoori Accuses Johnson of 'Opportunism' after Release from Iran Prison

Saturday, 26 March, 2022 - 06:15

Sherry Izadi, Elika Ashoori and Aryan Ashoori, the family of Anoosheh Ashoori stage an 'empty chair' protest opposite Downing Street, on the 4th anniversary of his imprisonment, in London, Britain, August 13, 2021. 

REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

London - Asharq Al-Awsat

Anoosheh Ashoori, a former detainee in Iran, has accused Boris Johnson of ‘opportunism’, claiming the prime minister only reached out to him after his release from detention.

The 67-year-old British-Iranian was held in Tehran’s Evin prison for five years after a visit to Iran in August 2017 to see his elderly mother.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen who went to Tehran in 2016 to visit her parents when her daughter was a toddler, was released last week along with Ashoori, who is a retired civil engineer.

Iran, which doesn’t recognize dual citizenship, has charged the detainees with crimes such as espionage and sentenced them to long prison terms under harsh conditions.

Speaking exclusively on Sky News program Beth Rigby Interviews, Ashoori said he felt let down by Britain's leader but praised the "fantastic job" civil servants have done behind-the-scenes.

Johnson did not respond to the family's requests for assistance, nor did he reply to a direct plea from Ashoori.

The detained Briton managed to record an audio message while inside the prison asking for Johnson's help. It was published by Sky News in 2020.

The retired engineer said: "I risked my safety but I managed to convey that message to him.

"Unfortunately he did not expend even five minutes to give a telephone call to my family."

However, on Monday, Ashoori received an invitation to meet with the prime minister.

He told Sky News: "Now he's eager to see us. How would you interpret that?

"I think that there's a bit of opportunism involved in it."

Asked if he would meet with the prime minister, Ashoori said: "I'm not sure."

UK

Why now? Trump, Biden and the real reason for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release


Anushka Asthana
Deputy Political Editor

The UK has long known that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention was wrapped together with a decades-old debt.

I remember speaking to her husband, Richard, in 2021, about his decision to first use the word “hostage”.

“Yes. She always has been a hostage. It took us a bit of time to realise it. It took us a bit of time to say it. It felt a very heavy word, and a brave word,” he told me on the Guardian’s Today in Focus Podcast.

“It took me a while to realise I would have to use the word first.”

By then it had dawned on Ratcliffe that his wife wasn’t a mistaken prisoner, but a pawn in a geopolitical struggle dating back to the 1970s, when Iran paid the UK £400 million for tanks that were then never delivered.

Richard Ratcliffe's tireless fight to bring wife Nazanin back to Britain

British wildlife conservationist released from Iran jail after Nazanin freed

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention almost half a century later – like that of Anousheh Ashouri – was effectively state-sponsored hostage taking, but also, the debt was a genuine one. And one that it is now clear, we were always willing to pay.

So, given that we have found a way to bypass American sanctions and hand over the money, why didn’t we do it much earlier?

Some speak of oil, others about a change of administration in Iran.

But the experts I speak to point in another direction. Not east to Iran, but west to America and the even more significant change in leadership there.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashoori have been reunited with their families after years of detention in Iran.

“The Trump administration insisted on maximum pressure on Iran – the Biden administration has turned that to maximum diplomacy,” said Dr Tobias Borck, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who specialises in Middle East security.

After all, Biden was the vice-president in the Obama administration that first took the US, along with the UK and others, into the nuclear deal with Iran (or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Under the accord, Iran would limit its sensitive nuclear activities in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

Trump pulled America out of that deal and reimposed sanctions, and other signatories – including the UK, France, and Germany – were unable to find a way to maintain a deal without America. Since his inauguration, Biden has wanted to put it back in place.

'The Biden administration sees engagement with Iran as largely positive and desirable'

Credit: Jabin Botsford/Pool/AP

So, what has this got to do with Nazanin? Well, the shift in administration in the US reopened negotiations, and in doing so, thawed relations between Iran and the West. Diplomacy around hostages wasn’t directly linked to that, but it was another increasingly positive discussion that was taking place alongside it.

Now, progress on the nuclear deal stalled because one key signatory is Russia – and its decision to invade Ukraine significantly complicated the situation. Borck said there are now fears in the US that completing the nuclear deal will give Russia a backdoor, via Iran, to avoid its sanctions. That leaves the US in a difficult position with Iran, but it doesn’t, and didn’t, stop the UK pushing ahead with its progress over hostages.

And the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, could complete the jigsaw, in part, because of the muted reaction she knew it would get from a United States under a different leader.

“It is very clear that under a Trump administration, making a deal like this would have been significantly harder for the UK – simply because – you can imagine Trump’s response to us giving this money to Iran.

"While the Biden administration sees engagement with Iran as largely positive and desirable,” added Borck.

That is not to say that other factors are not important. Truss pointed to the change in administration in Iran in 2021, from the more reformist figure of Hassan Rouhani, to the more conservative Ebrahim Raisi. Why would that help?

Some say that he was more able to complete a deal like this because there was no pressure to prove his conservative credentials.

Then there is the question of Truss herself. I’m told by civil servants that she has a laser-like determination to get things done. They say that can make her challenging to work for – but it can also mean results.

Civil servants say Foreign Secretary Liz Truss 'has a laser-like determination to get things done'

But what about oil? Some have pointed out that Iran could be an option in selling far more oil in the face of so much of the world trying to pivot away from Russia. It is true that this could happen, but ultimately that relies not on the UK, but on the US, and its return to the nuclear deal. Only that would limit the sanctions that currently prevent Iran from taking action here.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the return of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri was "wonderful" but did not ease concerns over Iran's actions.

“[Iran] continues to unjustly detain other British and foreign nationals, support extremist groups across the region, its hard-line government pays little regard for the human rights of Iranians, and it retains an active nuclear and ballistic missile programme," he said.

He warned against "short-termist shifts to other authoritarian states" and said the UK needs to move away from fossil fuels and "onto clean, cheap, homegrown renewables instead".

For Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others, this huge geopolitical wrangle has meant years of their lives lost to a tragedy that everyone hopes they can slowly rebuild from.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Iranian arms dealing continued in the UK even after notorious tank deal fell apart in 1979

Published: March 22, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

Following her release from detention in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, held hostage since 2016, said: “what happened now should have happened six years ago”. She was referring to the fact that her release had been secured at the same time as the British government paid Iran a debt it had owed since the first day of her detention – and had in fact owed since the 1970s.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was tragically used as a pawn in this decades-long dispute over almost £400 million.

My research has explored the history of the Anglo-Iranian arms trading relationship and has found that London continued to be a global hub for Iran’s arms purchasing efforts even after the 1979 Iranian revolution. This is perhaps surprising given what we know about Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. Received wisdom is that the UK failed to follow through on arms deals with Iran due to concerns over the politics and provocative actions of the new Iranian regime. These revelations from the archives make this narrative harder to swallow.
A contentious tank deal

Iran was a major customer for British weapons in the 1970s. Between 1971 and 1976, the Iranian government ordered 1,500 Chieftain tanks and 250 armoured recovery vehicles from Britain at a cost of around £650 million. These orders – and the associated funds – were lodged with British state-owned arms company International Military Services Ltd (IMS Ltd).

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At the time, Iran was dramatically expanding its arms purchases, having cashed in on the 1973 oil crisis that saw prices quadruple. The Shah of Iran – the monarch ruling the country – was using the proceeds to pursue domestic modernisation, including through defence and arms procurement. Journalist Anthony Sampson described Iran in the mid-1970s as “the salesman’s dream”. The country spent over US$10 billion on tanks, aircraft, missiles and all manner of weaponry between 1974 and 1976, and planned a further US$10 billion spend by 1981.

When the Shah of Iran was toppled in 1979, Britain did not see through on its arms deal. Alamy

The 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah saw the US halt arms sales to Iran. The UK – at least in some regard – followed suit. British tank transfers ceased and the bulk of the 1970s contract went unfulfilled. Only 185 of the Chieftain tanks ordered by the Shah had been delivered.

However, IMS Ltd held onto the Iranian government’s money – eventually said to be around £400 million when interest is taken into account. A long series of legal battles have been fought over these funds.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained nearly four decades later and, over the years, the link to the 1970s tank debt has gradually emerged. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was first told that the connection was being drawn between her imprisonment and the debt by her Iranian interrogators in 2016. Meanwhile, the British government remained cagey and avoided the question of a link. Now, however, it has formally confirmed that it paid the debt in the same statement announcing the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori.

The post-revolution arms network

While Britain halted the transfer of the Chieftain tanks when the Shah fell, the arms trading relationship with Iran did not cease entirely during the 1980s.

Indeed, by the time Iran was fighting a bloody war with Iraq that would last for most of the decade and claim up to a million lives, Britain, and London in particular, had a central role in Iran’s arms procurement networks.

My research shows that Iran was running a military procurement office in the heart of Westminster to supply its war machine. The office, hosted in the National Iranian Oil Company building, was located over the street from the Department for Trade and Industry, and a stone’s throw away from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

British government documents from 1985 note 60 to 70 arms dealers worked to broker arms deals in the building alongside over 200 oil company representatives. Contemporary press reports suggested millions of dollars of business flowed through the office, although British officials were reluctant to specify how much of Iran’s alleged US$1.2 billion annual arms purchases were handled in Westminster.

While few actual weapons systems appear to have been transferred through the offices, a search of the building in 1982 by the Metropolitan Police did uncover explosive fighter jet ejector seat parts in the basement.

Some evidence even suggests a link between IMS Ltd, the Chieftain tank deal and the Iranian offices. In the mid-1980s some spare parts for the tanks were supplied to Iran, with the name of Iran’s London office found on some leaked paperwork linked to the transaction.

The official British rules on arms transfers to Iran and Iraq during the war were complicated. Guidelines from 1984 suggested that Britain would not supply “lethal” equipment, that existing contracts should be fulfilled where possible and that transfers should not exacerbate or lengthen the conflict.

Richard Ratcliffe, pictured during his hunger strike towards the end of his wife’s captivity. Alamy

British officials were well aware of the Iranian office, and were frequently pressured to act against it by the US government. However, British intelligence struggled to understand what exactly was going on inside the building, and no clear evidence could ever be found of a breach of British law.

The desire to avoid a diplomatic spat with Iran but also the potential for a flourishing commercial relationship with Iran in other areas –- particularly supplying the National Iranian Oil Company – prevented British action.

It was only in 1987, following a series of Iranian provocations, including attacks on oil tankers and British diplomats in Tehran, that Margaret Thatcher’s government pulled the plug on Iran’s arms dealing operations in Westminster.
Insights from the archives

It is clear that challenging diplomatic relations and international sanctions on Iran over recent decades have made resolving the tank debt complicated. But the largely forgotten story of Iran’s London arms procurement office makes the British government’s unwillingness or inability to pay somewhat challenging to comprehend. Any narratives that suggested it was impossible to engage with the question of the debt skip over rather a lot of other activities that continued throughout the period in question.

I’ve been able to scrape together information about Iran’s audacious 1980s procurement operation at the heart of Westminster thanks to the rules that make government records public after 30 years. In another 30 years’ time, the archives might help to shed some further light on the events of 2022, as well as the years Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori spent imprisoned. They might tell us why it took so long for them to be reunited with their families.

Author

Daniel Salisbury
Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King's College London
Disclosure statement
Daniel Salisbury receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

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Iran debt should have been settled years ago - Zaghari-Ratcliffe

British-Iranian woman jailed by Iran criticises UK government for length of time it took to secure her release from Tehran jail.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said she should have been released from detention in Iran six years ago but the British government failed her. (AFP Archive)

Aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has accused Britain and Iran of treating her like a political pawn, saying it should not have taken six years for London to secure her release from detention in Tehran.

Appearing at a news conference in parliament in London, the 44-year-old said she would always be haunted by her time in prison but would slowly work to rebuild her life with her daughter, 7, and husband away from the spotlight.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds both British and Iranian citizenship, returned to Britain last week from Iran, where she was held for six years after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

She returned alongside another dual national, Anoosheh Ashoori, after London resolved what it called a parallel issue - repaying to Tehran a $526 million debt dating back to 1979 for the purchase of military tanks that were never delivered.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she had been told shortly after her arrest that the Iranians wanted "something off the Brits", and she could not understand why it had taken six years, and five different foreign secretaries, for it to be resolved.

"I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?" she asked. "What's happened now should have happened six years ago."

READ MORE: Making sense of Iran’s ambitions in post-Soviet states



A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said all foreign ministers had worked hard to secure her release.

"The government, including the prime minister, was committed to securing Nazanin's release as soon as possible. It was always entirely in Iran's gift to release detained dual nationals," he told reporters.

"All the foreign secretaries who have taken on this role have worked hard with officials to secure the release. It has been extremely complicated, it has been very difficult work."

Famous for a week

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by Revolutionary Guards at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016, while trying to return to Britain with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella from an Iranian New Year's trip to see her parents.

Her family and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, denied the charge against her. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters.

"I have been a pawn in the hands of the two governments over the past six years," she said. Zaghari-Ratcliffe thanked her family, friends and journalists for keeping her case in the spotlight, and said she was determined not to hold a grudge for the rest of her life.

She added that she only believed she was going home when she finally stepped on to the plane.

"Gabriella told me on the phone one day when I was in Iran, 'Mummy you do realise that you are very famous, and then it's me, and then it's daddy'," she said, adding that she told her daughter it would be better to have a "normal" life.

"And she said, 'Oh you're not going to be famous forever. Maximum a week'."

Iran nuclear deal 'close', Tehran frees captives as obstacles narrow



Richard Ratcliffe celebrates the release of his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian who had been held in Iran since 2016, as he carries their daughter Gabriella following a press briefing outside his home in London 

(AFP/JUSTIN TALLIS)

Jastinder KHERA
Wed, March 16, 2022

Washington said Wednesday it was "close" to a deal with Iran on reviving a 2015 pact that saw Western powers provide sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme, the latest sign of advancement following prolonged deadlock.

Days after Russian demands seemed to jeopardize talks in Vienna over restoring the pact, this week has seen multiple positive signals that an accord may at last be within reach, including the release of two British Iranians Wednesday after years of detention in Iran, and word that outstanding issues have narrowed to just two.

The negotiations began last April between Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and Russia, with the United States taking part indirectly.

Now a successful resolution appears more viable than at any point in years.

"We are close to a possible deal, but we're not there yet," said State Department spokesman Ned Price. "We do think the remaining issues can be bridged."

Speaking to reporters, Price declined to confirm Tehran's claim that there were just a pair of final issues to be sorted out, down from four, before agreeing to restore the six-party Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which aimed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

But he said the issues are surmountable, although the 11-month-old talks "are at a very delicate stage."

"There is little time remaining given the nuclear advancements that Tehran has made" toward developing nuclear weapons that would undermine any agreement, he said.

The EU diplomat chairing the Vienna talks, Enrique Mora, told reporters last week that delegations were down to negotiating the footnotes of the text, but progress stalled when Moscow demanded guarantees that Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine would not affect its trade with Iran.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated Tuesday that Russia had received "written guarantees" from Washington.

- 'Relieved' -

That news was followed Wednesday by Iran releasing two British-Iranians, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, taken as another sign of diplomatic thaw.

"I'm relieved that the problems were solved" allowing Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release, her husband Richard Ratcliffe told AFP at the family home. "The first thing she always wanted to do was me make her a cup of tea."

UK lawmaker Tulip Siddiq, who represents the north London district where Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family lives, tweeted a photo of her constituent smiling on board a plane.

"It's been 6 long years -- and I can't believe I can FINALLY share this photo," she wrote.

The increasingly positive signs have led some to hope the revival of the 2015 deal may be just days away, with one diplomatic source saying the process was on "the right track".

However, the same source warned that "we have to be cautious".

With good reason: negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme have been littered with missed deadlines.

The deal began to fall apart in 2018 when then-US president Donald Trump dramatically withdrew from it and went on to reimpose swinging economic sanctions on Iran.

That led Tehran to exceed the limits on its nuclear activity laid down in the deal.

Iran said Wednesday there were two remaining sticking points in Vienna, including an "economic guarantee" in case a future US administration repeats Trump's abrogation.

Another source close to the talks said the other issue was the status of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, which Washington has branded a terrorist organization.

- 'Too big to fail' -

According to analyst Henry Rome from the Eurasia Group, these problems are "unlikely to prove insurmountable".

"Both the US and Iran want a deal, and the latter probably used some diplomatic capital to persuade Russia to back off its confrontational stance," Rome added.

"It is now clear that Russia's tactical gambit to leverage the Iran nuclear deal to punch a hole in western sanctions regime over the crisis in Ukraine did not work," said Ali Vaez from the International Crisis Group.

Too much energy and political capital have been expended, and the deal "is now too big to fail," Vaez said.

As ever with the talks, there is always a possibility of last-minute complications.

"There may yet be some theatrics, with Iran trying to leverage high oil prices to win several additional concessions," said Rome.

In addition, on Wednesday the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report giving fresh details of advances in Iran's production of uranium metal, which could bedevil implementation of a deal.

anb-jsk-pdh/mlm/to

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe leaves Iran for UK after 5 years in prison, Boris Johnson confirms

2nd British-Iranian citizen Anoosheh Ashoori is also on his way home, says UK foreign secretary

Karim El-Bar |16.03.2022

Credit: https://twitter.com/TulipSiddiq

LONDON

British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is on her way home after more than five years in an Iranian prison, Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed on Wednesday.

A second British-Iranian citizen, Anoosheh Ashoori, is also on his way home.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted: "I can confirm Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori will return to the UK today … They will be reunited with their families later today.”

On Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American businessman and conservationist now serving 10 years for “contacts with the US enemy government,” Truss said he had “been released from prison on furlough … We will continue to work to secure Morad's departure from Iran."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: "I am very pleased to confirm that the unfair detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori in Iran has ended today, and they will now return to the UK.

"The UK has worked intensively to secure their release and I am delighted they will be reunited with their families and loved ones."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker, was arrested in 2016 after being accused of plotting to overthrow Iran’s government. She was in Iran visiting family, and has denied the charges.

Nevertheless, she was sentenced to five years in prison, spending four in Evin prison and a year under house arrest. As the end of her sentence neared, last April she was sentenced to a further year in prison.

Ashoori, 67, is a retired civil engineer. He was visiting his mother in Iran when he was arrested in 2017 on spying charges.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case has been extremely high profile in the UK, in large part due to the extraordinary efforts undertaken by her husband, Richard, to raise awareness and lobby for her release.

Her local MP Tulip Siddiq has also been extremely active, having lobbied five British foreign secretaries over the years to secure her release.

Siddiq tweeted: “Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home. I came into politics to make a difference, and right now I’m feeling like I have.”

Reports say Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment was linked to a £400 million ($523 million) debt Iran says is owed to them by Britain for an unfulfilled order of 1,500 Chieftain tanks.

Truss told Sky News today that the £400 million is a “legitimate debt” and that it is a “priority to pay the debt that we owe to Iran.”

The government has refused to confirm or deny if the debt has been paid.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, British woman held captive by Iran since 2016, is released

Alexandra Ma , Sinéad Baker , and Henry Dyer

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Family Handout / PA

A British-Iranian woman detained by Iran since 2016 was released on Wednesday, her lawyer said.

Iran accused Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe of being a spy. Her family and the UK deny this.
She was held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran's capital.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who had been detained by Iran since 2016, was released Wednesday.

As of Wednesday morning UK time, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in the air departing Tehran, due to return to the United Kingdom late in the evening via Oman.

Anoosheh Ashoori, another British-Iranian dual national held by Iran, was also released and on his way out of the country. He was sentenced to ten years in jail in 2019 and accused of spying for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and "acquiring illegitimate wealth," claims that he denies.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori's release Wednesday and said they were both returning to the UK.

Tulip Siddiq, the member of parliament for Zaghari-Ratcliffe's constituency, tweeted: "Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home. I came into politics to make a difference, and right now I'm feeling like I have."

Siddiq also posted this photo, which she said shows Zaghari-Ratcliffe traveling home:

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation — a charity that does not work directly with the news agency — was arrested in Iran in 2016 and accused of being a spy.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken at a Tehran airport in April 2016 when she was returning home to London with her young daughter after visiting her parents.

An Iranian court convicted her of spying, training journalists, and plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. She, her family, and the British government have repeatedly denied the allegations.

She was held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, the Iranian capital. She was denied permission to seek medical attention even after she described finding lumps in her breast and being in a fragile mental state. Ashoori was also held in Evin Prison, his family said.

Truss said the release of the British nationals came "in parallel" with the settlement of a £393.8 million ($516 million) debt owed by the UK to Iran, which had been outstanding for more than 40 years since the Iranian Revolution.

The debt was created when the British government cancelled the delivery of military vehicles due to be delivered to the overthrown government led by the Shah of Iran. The terms of the agreement are confidential but the funds will be ringfenced for the purchase of humanitarian goods, Truss said.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and the British government had been appealing for her release for almost six years.

Video shows BBC News presenter Joanna Gosling choking up as she announced news of the release.

In her Wednesday tweet, Truss also said Morad Tahbaz, a British-American wildlife conservationist whom Iran arrested in 2018 and accused of espionage, was temporarily released from prison in Iran. There has been no evidence to back Iran's claim about Tahbaz.

MP Says Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Has Been Freed And Is "At The Airport In Tehran And On Her Way Home"

(Alamy)

Eleanor Langford

The MP for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said the British citizen, who has been detained in Iran since April 2016, is returning to the UK after having her British passport returned.

Labour MP Tulip Siddiq claimed on Tuesday that a British negotiating team had travelled to Iran, and that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been given her British passport back.

The British-Iranian dual national was arrested at Imam Kohmeini airport and sentenced to a five-year term in prison for the charge of spying, an an allegation she strongly denies.

Earlier on Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that talks over the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other British citizens detained in Iran were "moving forward".

"I shouldn't really say much more right now just because those negotiations continue to be under way and we're going right up to the wire," he claimed earlier.

Talks to free British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘going up to the wire’

Hopes have been raised after an MP revealed yesterday that the 43-year-old’s British passport had been returned to her.


Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 as she prepared to fly back to the UK.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH TEHRAN to free British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe are “moving forward” and are “going right up to the wire”, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

The Prime Minister raised hopes today that the six-year ordeal could come to a close after suggestions the mother of one has had her passport returned.

But Johnson, during a trip to the Middle East, was cautious not to elaborate further on the state of negotiations with Tehran “because those negotiations continue to be under way”.

A glimmer of optimism for the 43-year-old came a day earlier when her constituency MP in Hampstead and Kilburn, Tulip Siddiq, said she had been returned her British passport.

‘Moving forward’

Johnson confirmed a British negotiating team was working in Tehran to secure the release of dual nationals, while Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe remains at her family home in the Iranian capital.

“I really don’t think I should say much more, I’m sorry, although things are moving forward,” he told broadcasters at the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi.

“I shouldn’t really say much more right now just because those negotiations continue to be under way and we’re going right up to the wire.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 as she prepared to fly back to the UK, having taken her daughter Gabriella – then not even two years old – to see relatives.

She was accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government and sentenced to five years in jail, spending four years in Tehran’s Evin Prison and one under house arrest.

Both the British government and Zaghari-Ratcliffe have always denied the allegations.

While the details of the negotiations remain unclear, it is possible they are linked to a £400 million (€475m) debt dating back to the 1970s owned to Iran by the UK.

The government accepts it should pay the “legitimate debt” for an order of 1,500 Chieftain tanks that was not fulfilled after the shah was deposed and replace by a revolutionary regime.

Tehran remains under strict sanctions, however, which have been linked to the failure to clear the debt.

Explainer
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Could deal over £400m tank debt secure British-Iranian mother's freedom?

Boris Johnson confirms that "conversations are still going on" to secure the release of British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was first arrested by Iranian authorities six years ago.


Tom Rayner
Digital politics editor @RaynerSkyNews
Wednesday 16 March 2022 07:07, UK

Boris Johnson has said he does not want to "tempt fate" by commenting on negotiations currently taking place to secure the freedom of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The prime minister confirmed on Tuesday that "conversations are still going on" to secure the release of the British-Iranian mother.

She was first arrested by Iranian authorities six years ago on accusations she had been conspiring against the country's government - charges she has always denied.

Hopes are now growing that her release could be imminent after Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's MP - Tulip Siddiq - claimed in a social media post that her passport had been returned and that a British negotiating team were in Tehran.


What is being negotiated?

There has not been any official account of the nature of negotiations taking place, which are understood to also relate to other consular cases involving dual British-Iranian nationals.

However, earlier this year, the PM did not deny there were efforts to strike a deal that would see the UK government settle an historical debt dispute with Iran.

During PMQs on 9 February, Ms Siddiq said she understood a deal signed between the UK government and the Iranian authorities in the summer of 2021 "that would have resulted in the payment of the £400m that we owe Iran and the release of my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe" had fallen through.

Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says this move is the 'most significant chink of light for many years.'

She urged the PM to personally meet her and Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, to explain why the agreement had broken down.

Mr Johnson responded: "The International Military Services, or IMS, debt is difficult to settle and square away for all sorts of reasons to do with sanctions.

"But we will continue to work on it and I will certainly make sure that we have another meeting with Richard Ratcliffe in due course."

What is the IMS debt?

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the British government cancelled an order for 1,500 Chieftain tanks and armoured vehicles.

The order was being handled by what was then the Ministry of Defence's arms-trading subsidiary - International Military Services.

The order had already been paid for when it was cancelled. The debt owed following the non-delivery of the tanks is estimated at £400m.

Last November, Foreign Office minister James Cleverley told MPs the government accepts liability for the debt, but said settling the matter was "not easy" due to sanctions imposed on Iran.

"The UK government recognise that we have a duty to legally repay this debt and we continue to explore all legal options to resolve this 40-year-old case," he said in the House of Commons.

But he added: "We do not accept British dual nationals being used as diplomatic leverage."

A High Court hearing on the question of the IMS debt repayment had been scheduled for April 2021 but was adjourned at the request of the Iranian defence ministry. A new hearing date has yet to be set.

Mr Ratcliffe has previously accused the government of being "too timid" in its negotiations with Iran, and recently went on hunger strike to put pressure on ministers to go further to secure his wife's release.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her daughter Gabriella, pictured in 2016

Is there any connection to the Iran nuclear deal negotiations?

Since his election, US President Joe Biden has been working to re-establish the Iran nuclear deal, which his predecessor Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.

Those talks have increased in intensity in recent months, with reports the US could be close to rejoining the agreement - despite complications caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aims to ease sanctions on Iran in return for limits being put on Tehran's nuclear programme.

It was signed by the US, UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, the EU and Iran in 2015.

Last summer, Iran's main negotiator accused Western countries of delaying talks around prisoners to force Iran into JCPOA negotiations before a new government was in place.

Both the US administration and UK government have repeatedly insisted there is no connection between the efforts to negotiate the release of dual national prisoners and the nuclear talks.

However, following the JCPOA's initial implementation in 2016, Barack Obama's administration did secure the release of four American prisoners from Iran.