Tehran is keen to see Britain do more to help with Afghan refugee crisis
Liz Truss has said she hopes Britain will soon be in a position to pay the £400m debt overdue to Iran, according to an Iranian account of the phone call between the foreign secretary and her Tehran counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
UK government officials have been exploring legal ways to pay Britain’s historical debt, although international economic sanctions on Iran have made it difficult.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary says invasion by Putin could embolden Iran and China to expand their ambitions
The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has warned of a “dangerous moment for the world” as the “highly likely” prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine could embolden other countries such as Iran and China to expand their ambitions.
Speaking on Sky News, Truss said “we could be on the brink of a war in Europe, which would have severe consequences not just for the people of Russian and Ukraine but for the broader security in Europe”, adding she was “very worried”.
Continue reading...No sign of breakthrough as Iran continues to advance ability to make nuclear weapon
Marathon talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal have hit a new roadblock, with Iran accusing the US of refusing to make the necessary political decisions to entrench the agreement in international law or to broaden the scope of economic sanctions that would be lifted.
The issue has dogged the talks in Vienna between the west, Russia, Iran and China – which have been under way since February – from the outset. There is no sign that the eighth round of negotiations, once intended to be the final round, has reached the breakthrough some had been expecting.
Continue reading...Charity worker’s husband demands transparency from No 10 amid fears she is being used as ‘bargaining chip’ in nuclear talks
The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity worker detained in Iran, has said she is “very, very angry” after learning about the collapse of a deal to bring her home.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe fears she is a “bargaining chip” in ongoing nuclear talks and is filled with “anger at her life being stolen” and the government’s “lack of urgency” in securing her release, Richard Ratcliffe said.
Continue reading...Lawyer says refugees, who were protesting against Turkey leaving Istanbul convention on violence against women, are at risk in Iran
Three Iranian refugees are facing deportation from Turkey after taking part in a demonstration against Ankara’s withdrawal from the Istanbul convention on violence against women.
Lily Faraji, Zeinab Sahafi and Ismail Fattahi were arrested after attending a protest in the southern Turkish city of Denizli last March. A fourth Iranian national, Mohammad Pourakbari, was detained with the others, despite not attending the protests, according to Buse Bergamalı, their lawyer.
Continue reading...In a suspenseful film that quietly builds tension, a widow battles her in-laws after her husband is executed and meets a new man
A woman outside a jail in Tehran asks to see her husband. Visiting hours have finished, the guard tells her. The woman pleads: “He’s about to be executed.” Inside, her husband looks up as she walks into his cell, silent, despairing. As the door slams shut, the camera is left staring at the closed door, listening to the woman’s agonised sobs. So begins this restrained Iranian drama about her fight for justice. It’s a film that quietly builds tension, almost suffocating by the end. Made in the austere Iranian tradition, the style is spare, no soundtrack, little to no camera movement – but with a real intimacy between the characters and screen.
Maryam Moghaddam (who also co-directs) plays Mina: one year after her husband Babak’s execution, she is blandly informed by an official that he has been exonerated – the real murderer has been identified and arrested. It’s all been a terrible mistake, everyone is sorry. But there is nothing to be done. “After all, it was God’s will.” As a widow living alone, Mina is powerless. Her late husband’s brother bullies her to move in with the family. Reading between the lines he would like to marry her and his father appears to want to get his hands on the blood money due to Mina as compensation. When she refuses, they threaten her with a custody battle over her daughter Bita (Avin Poor Raoufi), who is deaf.
Continue reading...After their songs were deemed blasphemous propaganda, the duo were forced to flee to Norway and claim asylum. Now a band, they are writing angrily about what they faced
For almost as long as it’s existed, heavy metal has been used as protest music. On Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, the first thing you’re barraged with is War Pigs: a seven-minute savaging of the politicians who instigated the Vietnam war. Iron Maiden once had their mascot, Eddie, murder Margaret Thatcher on a single’s artwork; Metallica and Megadeth spent the 1980s lambasting cold war superpowers that didn’t know whether to shake hands or nuke each other.
Nikan Khosravi, singer and guitarist of Iranian/Norwegian thrashers Confess, views his band as another protest act in the metal lineage. “I’m the kid who told the emperor: ‘You’re naked!’” he exclaims with pride and excitement on a call from Norway. However, the five-piece don’t write their brutish tracks about some faraway conflict, or satirise a government certain to ignore them.
Continue reading...The British-Iranian dual national is staging a strike in solidarity with Barry Rosen who is campaigning outside Vienna nuclear talks
A British-Iranian man imprisoned in Iran is to start a hunger strike on Sunday in support of a 77-year-old American who is protesting outside nuclear talks in Vienna against Iranian hostage taking.
Anoosheh Ashoori, who is being held in Evin prison in Tehran, is staging the strike in an act of solidarity with Barry Rosen, who started his own four days ago. He told the Guardian he was humbled by the support, as well as other messages being sent to him by Iranians in jail.
Continue reading...Analysis: As clock runs down on Vienna talks, key obstacles remain to be cleared by Tehran and the west
The countdown to the end of the six-month-long talks in Vienna on the future of the Iran nuclear deal has begun. No deadline has been formally set, but if there is no progress in less than two weeks the process will come to an end leaving a dangerous vacuum.
The White House has already been rolling the pitch preparing its political lines for a breakdown by saying the US withdrawal from the agreement by Donald Trump in 2018 has proved to be a disaster. If there is no agreement, the Biden team intend Trump will take the blame.
Continue reading...Amiri, 34, back in UK after Iran’s supreme court overturned 2019 conviction and 10-year prison sentence
An Iranian woman who worked for the British Council has been freed from detention in Evin prison and returned to the UK after being acquitted of spying charges.
Aras Amiri’s lawyers had mounted an appeal to the Iranian supreme court that led to her release. She is now at an undisclosed address in the UK.
Continue reading...He has been detained at airports and told never to return to Iran. But the director, who could be about to win his third Oscar, refuses to be silenced about outrages in his own country – and in the west
Withdrawing your film from the Oscars would be career suicide for most directors, but in November Asghar Farhadi appeared to do precisely that. Shortly after Iran’s state-controlled film board put his movie, A Hero, up for the best international feature Oscar, Farhadi released a statement on Instagram saying he was “fed up” with suggestions in Iranian media that he was sympathetic to the country’s hardline government. “If your introduction of my film for the Oscars has led you to the conclusion that I am in your debt,” he wrote, “I am explicitly declaring now that I have no problem with you reversing this decision.”
Farhadi, it could be argued, can afford to make such a gesture. He has already won two international feature Oscars – for A Separation in 2012 and The Salesman in 2017 – and many more awards besides (A Hero won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year). Such achievements inevitably convey national hero status. At the same time, he seems to have trodden a careful line when it comes to his country’s oppressive regime. Other Iranian film-makers, such as Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, have paid a heavy price for criticising aspects of Iranian society, from prison sentences and house arrests to travel bans. Farhadi seems to have been spared similar treatment. Hence the accusations that he was “pro- government”.
Continue reading...Civil lawsuit was filed against Iran and other officials the family members believe were to blame for the incident
A court in Ontario, Canada, has awarded C$107m ($83.94m), plus interest, to the families of six people who died when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards downed a Ukraine International Airlines plane near Tehran two years ago.
Iran shot down the airliner in January 2020. All 176 people on board were killed, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
Continue reading...Iranian-Austrian Kamran Ghaderi is serving a 10-year sentence for spying and his family are still waiting for answers
Six years ago on New Year’s Day, an Iranian-Austrian IT businessman said goodbye to his wife and three children and boarded a flight from Vienna to Tehran via Istanbul. Kamran Ghaderi was due to return five to six days later, but instead, on 2 January 2016, he was arrested and has now spent six years in Evin prison in Tehran.
In October 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years for spying for a foreign country at a trial in which neither he nor his lawyer were able to say more than two words. His sentencing was based on a confession he gave under what his wife, Harika, says was torture, in the belief she might be in danger. No written judgment has ever been given to his family.
Continue reading...Years of brutal conflict have brought misery to an already impoverished country. There is no end in sight
By the end of this year, the United Nations warned recently, 377,000 Yemenis will have died from seven devastating years of war – in many cases killed by indirect causes such as hunger; in others, by airstrikes or missile bombardments. Seventy per cent of the fatalities are thought to be children under five.
As 2021 began, there were hopes that Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House might bring progress towards peace. His administration quickly announced it was ending all support for offensive operations by Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded the US- and UK-backed coalition fighting for the internationally recognised government overthrown by Houthi rebels. It also revoked the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group. But Mr Biden’s team overestimated its ability to help resolve the crisis. The diplomatic push soon faltered. In October, Washington announced a $500m military contract with Riyadh which includes support for its attack helicopters, used in operations in Yemen.
Continue reading...Second attack on cargo hub this month reported to have caused ‘significant material damage’
An Israeli airstrike hit Syria’s Latakia port before dawn on Tuesday, sparking a fire that lit up the Mediterranean seafront in the second such attack on the cargo hub this month, Syrian state media reported.
Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
Continue reading...Tehran is keen to verify US sanctions have genuinely been lifted
An eighth round of talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal has begun in Vienna, with Iran saying participants have been largely working from an acceptable common draft text and that its team was willing to stay as long as it takes to reach an agreement.
The Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said he wanted the focus of the coming round of talks to be on how Tehran could verify US sanctions had genuinely been lifted. The landmark 2015 deal, from which Donald Trump withdrew the US, had lifted sanctions on Iran in return for controls on its civilian nuclear programme.
Continue reading...Our 20 favourite pieces of the year
After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own
Continue reading...Participants in women’s fasting relay will demand Boris Johnson repay £400m to Iran for 1970s arms deal
Women around the world will take turns to fast for 24 hours in an attempt to put pressure on the UK government to secure the freedom of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from detention in Iran.
The campaign by FiLiA, a female-led volunteer organisation working for the liberation of women, follows the 21-day hunger strike Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, mounted outside the Foreign Office in London until mid-November.
Continue reading...European negotiators issue warning as talks adjourned to allow Iranian envoy to return for consultation
Attempts to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are “rapidly reaching the end of the road”, European negotiators have warned, as talks in Vienna adjourned to allow the Iranian negotiator to return home for consultation – a pause described by the Europeans as disappointing.
“We hope that Iran is in a position to resume the talks quickly, and to engage constructively so that talks can move at a faster pace,” France, Germany and the UK said. “As we have said, there are weeks not months before the deal’s core non-proliferation benefits are lost. We are rapidly reaching the end of the road for this negotiation.
Continue reading...Officials hopeful that US and European nations will agree Tehran is in breach of its obligations
Tehran’s approach to talks on its nuclear programme in Vienna has become so uncompromising according to Israel’s lead diplomat on Iran, Joshua Zarka, that they “have reached the last stretch of diplomacy”.
Israeli officials said they were hopeful that the US and European nations would agree to put an emergency motion to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stating that Iran was in breach of its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the 2015 nuclear deal.
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