British foreign secretary meets Iran’s president
Johnson expected to discuss fate of imprisoned dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was convicted of plotting against Iranian government
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British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the second day of his two-day visit to Iran.
No details of Sunday’s meeting were immediately available. He had been expected to discuss the fate of detained dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year prison sentence for allegedly plotting against Iran’s government.
Her husband says she faces trial on new charges Sunday that carry the possibility of an additional 16 years’ imprisonment, but Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said last month that her verdict has been finalized.
London is considering repaying Tehran some £400 million ($535 million) from a pre-1979 arms deal. Both sides say the money isn’t related to Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Johnson met with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear program, earlier Sunday.
On Saturday Johnson held two hours of “frank” talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, which touched on the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, the future of which has been thrown into doubt by US President Donald Trump.
“They both spoke frankly about the obstacles that remain in the relationship, including the foreign secretary’s concerns about the consular cases of British-Iranian nationals,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen, was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016 after visiting relatives.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has raised concerns about his wife’s mental health, citing the mounting toll of her prolonged incarceration in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
The case has become highly politicized, especially after a “slip of the tongue” by Johnson last month when he stated that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran, which has been used by the Iranian authorities to help justify the new charges.
Johnson also met with parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who said Britain needed to do more to open trade and banking ties with Iran.
“Since the JCPOA (nuclear deal), trade and economic cooperation between the two countries have been unsatisfactory and the facilitation of banking relations can be a start for expanding cooperation in other sectors,” Shamkhani said after the meeting, according to official news agency IRNA.
The Times of Israel Community.