UK seeks to pay £400m debt ‘linked’ to Nazanin jailing
‘We acknowledge it is Iranian money and it does have to go back to Tehran’
BRITAIN is looking at ways to pay off the £400million debt that Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe’s husband believes is linked to her detention in Iran, a former senior diplomat has confirmed.
Lord Mcdonald, who was permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office until September last year, said that Britain was putting “a huge amount of imagination and effort” into ways to pay Iran the money that would not be subject to US sanctions.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “We acknowledge it is Iranian money and it does have to go back to Tehran … A key complication is that Iran is subject to very comprehensive sanctions, so how this money is repaid is part of the story.”
Lord Mcdonald denied any connection between settling the debt and Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe’s release, even though he acknowledged Iran had linked the two in negotiations.
The process was “in the endgame”, he said. “The Iranian system is behaving in a typical way. Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe has completed her sentence, but the final moves have still to take place.”
Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe was jailed on secret espionage charges in 2015. She was released from house arrest on completion of her sentence on Sunday, but has been ordered to attend another court hearing next week.
Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, believes she and other dual-nationals are being held hostage until the UK pays the debt, and has expressed frustration at the refusal of diplomats to admit to it.
Iran has for decades been seeking reimbursement for a 1970s arms purchase that was only partially delivered.
In 2008, an international arbitration court ruled that the UK owed the money, but the two governments have been locked in a legal wrangle over the exact sum and whether or not the UK should pay interest on it. The next court hearing in the dispute is due in April.