This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Boris Johnson has held “frank” talks with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran regarding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman who has been imprisoned there for nearly two years.

The foreign secretary, who landed in the Iranian capital on Saturday morning, had a two-hour meeting with Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, about a number of issues including his “grave concerns” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said a range of bilateral issues had been covered and that both ministers had “spoken frankly about the obstacles in the relationship”, including Johnson’s concerns about the consular cases of British-Iranian dual nationals.

He said the meeting had been “constructive” and both emphasised their commitment to continuing to work together to improve the bilateral relationship.

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Johnson will also meet Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, and other officials, the state news agency Irna said on Saturday.

The visit will be Johnson’s first to the country and only the third by a British foreign minister to Iran in the last 14 years.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will appear in court on Sunday facing new charges relating to espionage that could result in her five-year sentence being extended by as much as 10 years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is detained in Iran. Photograph: Family Handout/PA

Johnson has denied these additional charges are due to his error in telling a foreign affairs select committee in November that she had been in Iran to train journalists.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016 with her young daughter, a British national, and accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic republic.

She has always maintained her innocence and said she was visiting family. Her employer, Thomson Reuters Foundation, has said she was not there to work and was only on holiday.

Johnson has since apologised for the mistake and recently met her British husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who said he was “waiting on tenterhooks and biting his nails” about the foreign secretary’s visit.



Profile Who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Show Hide Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian-British dual national who has been jailed in Iran since April 2016. She has been accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic. She and her three-year-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to return to the UK from Iran after a family visit when she was arrested. Since then, she has spent most of her time in Evin prison in Tehran, separated from her daughter. In January 2019 she went on hunger strike for three days in protest against being denied medical care in Tehran’s Evin prison. In March, the UK Foreign Office granted her diplomatic protection, a step that raised her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states. Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010 before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, as a project manager. Her family has always said that she was in Iran on holiday. Photograph: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe/PA

He told the Guardian: “I’m really pleased he is there in time for Nazanin’s trial and waiting to see what will happen, and trying not to have too clear expectations at all.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe is one of a small number of cases of dual nationals (a status that Iran does not recognise) whose release Britain is seeking on humanitarian grounds.

The Foreign Office has declined to name the other individuals involved – or even identify the number in jail – after their families asked for their cases to be kept out of the public eye.

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Johnson said in a statement prior to his arrival that he hoped his visit would be constructive. The conflict in Yemen and securing access for humanitarian aid were top priorities, he said, as well as underlining the UK’s continued support for Iran’s nuclear deal.

He said: “We will also discuss our bilateral relationship and I will stress my grave concerns about our dual-national consular cases and press for their release where there are humanitarian grounds to do so.”



He also said that the relationship with Iran was not straightforward but that dialogue was key to managing differences and making progress even under difficult conditions.