Iran TV broadcasts stories about 2 jailed dual nationals

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian state television has aired videos targeting a Briton and an American serving time on espionage charges, likely trying to pressure the U.S. and Britain as London considers making a $530 million payment to Tehran.

State television aired footage of Chinese-American national Xiyue Wang as President Donald Trump continues his hard line against Tehran and its nuclear deal.

Iranian-British national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, already serving a five-year prison sentence for allegedly planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while traveling there with her toddler daughter, faces new charges that could add 16 years to her prison term.

On Thursday, Iranian state television aired a seven-minute special report on Zaghari-Ratcliffe. It included close-ups of an April 2010 pay stub from her previous employer, the BBC World Service Trust.

It also included an email from June 2010 in which she wrote about the “ZigZag Academy,” a BBC World Service Trust project that trained “young aspiring journalists from Iran and Afghanistan through a secure online platform.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe left the BBC in 2011 and joined the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency. Both her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and Thomson Reuters repeatedly have said she was not training journalists or involved in any work regarding Iran while there.

Late Sunday, Iranian state TV aired a feature focused on Wang, a Chinese-born American graduate student at Princeton University accused of passing confidential information about Iran to the State Department. He was arrested while researching a dynasty that once ruled Iran for his doctorate, according to Princeton.