Iran Slams Canada For UN Resolution Censuring Its Rights Abuses

Straw said the only possible obstacle to paying the debt was potential United States sanctions, which threaten punitive action against any third party dealing with Iran’s financial sector. But Straw suggested this was unlikely given past US behavior in similar circumstances.

“When there was previously a Democrat [Party] government in power in Washington, and John Kerry was the secretary of state, he arranged for about $2 billion to be paid to the Iranian government – [money] the US owed - the money was put on a plane,” Straw said. “The United States are not going to make a fuss about us paying a debt, if necessary in a similar way.”

On the same day, in January 2016, that the US flew to Tehran $1.7 billion it owed Iran, the Iranian authorities released four Americans, including Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American journalist arrested in July 2014. Washington also freed seven Iranians held over alleged sanctions violations.

Straw said he was convinced that “from time to time the Islamic Republic of Iran has engaged in what amounts to hostage taking” and that while he could not be certain, he assumed this was the case with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe detained in Iran since 2016.

Straw has been a proponent of improving ties with Iran, arguing that the regime in Tehran is not the revolutionary government of 40 years ago and diplomacy can work to change its policies.

But the former foreign secretary insisted that, nonetheless, the money was owed: “If we pay, it will not create any further difficulties for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and may very well ease her circumstances of release.”

International arbitration ruled in 2001 that London should repay money given by Iran for military hardware that was never delivered.

‘Complicated’ relations

Straw noted that Britain’s relationship with Iran was “complicated,” and had been so before the 1979 Revolution. While he said Britain had on occasions handled Zeghari-Ratcliffe’s case poorly – he cited Boris Johnson’s 2017 statement to a parliamentary committee that she was in Iran training journalists – the situation needed “very careful diplomacy” and that “shouting at them, or as some people have said, breaking off diplomatic relations, is going to get us absolutely nowhere.”

Straw said he shared the frustration of Richard Ratcliffe, who is in hospital for tests after a 21-day hunger strike outside the British foreign office in London to draw attention to the plight of his wife.

The issue of paying the £400 million ($540 million) debt is controversial in British politics, with Ratcliffe alleging his wife is forbidden from leaving Iran, effectively held ‘hostage,’ to pressure London to pay.

Taking ‘hostages’

While Straw has earlier argued that Britain should pay, others, including many within the ruling Conservative Party, oppose the move, arguing it would encourage Iran to take other hostages. An ex-detainee in Iran, theAustralian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, said Wednesday that the British government should repay the £400 million only in the form of “humanitarian aid.”

In a debate Tuesday in the British parliament Jeremy Hunt, a former Conservative foreign minister, said the UK should immediately pay “if necessary, by getting an RAF [British air force] plane to fly gold to Tehran.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager for Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in 2016, convicted without a fair trial of working to overthrow the government and sentenced to five years jail. After being paroled early in 2020, she was charged with new offences and has been refused permission to leave the country. Other British citizens held in Iran are dual-nationals Anoosheh Ashoori, a businessman, and labor activist Mehran Raoof.

In a statement, the Shin Bet security service said the suspect corresponded with the unnamed person over social media. It said he provided photographs taken in the house as proof he had access and proposing installing malware on Gantz's computer.

The Shin Bet said the suspect, who performed housekeeping and cleaning tasks in Gantz's residence, was indicted on espionage charges by a court in Lod, a city near Tel Aviv. It said he was arrested after an investigation earlier this month.

It was not immediately clear whether he had entered a plea.

The Public Defender's Office, which assigned a lawyer to aid the suspect, said he had acted out of "financial duress" and had not intended to harm national security.

Gal Wolf, the attorney representing him, implied on Kan public radio that the man had intended to extract money without actually being able to carry out any espionage.

"A person can boast and say he can deliver the goods, (but) the Shin Bet's statement does not stand the test of reality," Wolf said.

In its announcement, the Shin Bet said that while the suspect posed a potential danger to national security, he "was not exposed to classified material and subsequently none was passed on from him to the elements with whom he made contact".

Report by Reuters

They said the prosecution ordered the detainees to be held at the central prison for 21 days while investigations continue into alleged "membership in a prohibited party, money laundering and spying".

The Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Gulf Arab states in 2016 designated Iran-allied Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Lebanon is facing a diplomatic crisis as Gulf states become increasingly dismayed by Hezbollah's expanding influence over Lebanese politics.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain last month expelled Lebanese diplomats and recalled their own envoys following a minister's critical comments about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. Riyadh banned all imports from Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said the measures were driven not just by those comments but rather by Riyadh's objections to the "domination" of Hezbollah.

Kuwait has long maintained balanced ties between its larger neighbors, but in 2016 it convicted a group of Shi'ite Kuwaitis for spying for Iran and Hezbollah, accusing Tehran at the time of seeking to destabilize it. Iran had denied any connection.

Report by Reuters

The coalition was taking "operational measures to deal with the sources of hostile cross-border attacks," Saudi state news agency SPA reported.

The coalition said later it conducted a wide operation on military targets in the Yemeni provinces of Sanaa, Dhamar, Saada, and al-Jawf in response to ballistic and drone threats, Saudi state TV reported.

Workshops and warehouses for ballistic missiles, drones, and communications systems were destroyed, it said.

The coalition added that it targeted what was described as a secret facility for experts from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon's Hezbollah, who it accuses of being involved in hostile attacks against the kingdom.

The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the government from the capital Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia says Hezbollah arms, supplies and trains the Houthis. Western countries and UN experts have accused Iran of arming the Houthis.

Mohammadi called her husband, who lives in France, from Evin prison telling him that she was in solitary confinement. Rahman wrote later in a Twitter post that the line had been cut when Mohammadi insisted that she would not allow the lashing.

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Mohammadi was arrested Tuesday at a death anniversary ceremony at a cemetery in Karaj, west of Tehran, for Ebrahim Ketabdar, shot dead by security forces during 2019 protests, reportedly while shopping.

In a video posted to Twitter, Ketabdar's mother claimed security beat Mohammadi, dragged her into their vehicle and took her away. Another video posted on Twitter showed her protesting to the security forces over Mohammadi’s arrest amid chants of "Down with the Dictator."

Solitary cell

Former political prisoner Arash Sadeghi in a tweet Wednesday said Mohammadi was being held in “a solitary cell in a ward run by the Revolutionary Guards.”

"Narges Mohammadi and Atena Daemi's [an anti-capital punishment campaigner] sentencing to lashes is for their protest against people's massacre in November 2019,” Sadeghi tweeted. “Let's not remain silent against this inhumane sentence.”

The outstanding convictions date to July, when Mohammadi was convicted on charges of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic" for issuing a statement against the death penalty and "disobeying the prison governor and authorities." Mohammadi claimed this resulted from what she claimed was a prison governor's inappropriate behavior that amounted to sexual harassment.

Mohammadi refused to attend her trial in March having said in an open letter the previous month that she would refuse to accept any sentence passed by the court. She then refused a summons to serve the sentence in September.

Cofounder and chair of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, Mohammadi has been to jail several times over the past two decades. She was freed from Evin September 2020 after serving five and half years when she had no contact with her husband and children for long stretches.

She was detained twice before this year, once for participating in a rally in front of the interior ministry during week-long water protests in Khuzestan and again at an anti-Taliban rally outside the Pakistan embassy in Tehran in September. She was freed both times after a few hours.