February 15, 2019
Iran has belatedly said that British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not being held to force Britain to pay a debt to Iran for army tanks the UK refused to deliver after the revolution.
For years, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has said he believes she is held hostage for the unpaid 40-year-old debt. Many British newspapers have reported the debt demand as if it were established fact. British officials, however, have repeatedly said that Iran has never made such a demand when British diplomats have raised the case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
In a recent interview with an Iranian news service, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi denounced the British news reports as false. Qasemi said the issue is a fabricated link between two unrelated issues. He charged the link was initiated by unnamed political centers that seek to mount pressure on the Islamic Republic.
The spokesman explained that the case of Britain’s debts to Iran dates back to before the victory of the Islamic Revolution, while Zaghari’s case is something totally different, which has been dealt with by the Judiciary.
At the time of her arrest in April 2016, the Pasdaran said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “a main ringleader of hostile institutions who have been involved in criminal activities over the past years under the auspices of the foreign governments’ media and espionage services.” She is now serving a five-year sentence.
She turned 40 on December 26 and marked her 1,000th day in captivity two days later.
Britain owes Iran about 400 million pounds ($500 million) to settle the outstanding debt from the 1970s, when the Shah ordered Chieftain military tanks. After the revolution in 1979, the UK stopped delivering the tanks.
