Foreign secretary says reopening embassy dependent on resolving technical issues but move would allow Iran to reopen London mission

The UK hopes to reopen its embassy in Iran before Christmas, four years after it was ransacked during protests against sanctions, Philip Hammond has said.

The foreign secretary told the House of Commons that he hoped to visit Tehran, after Iran struck a deal with the international community aimed at preventing the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

“There are some technical issues, as I’ve explained to the house before, on both sides that will have to be resolved before it can be done,” he said.

“But there is a very clear will to do it and I will be working directly with my Iranian counterpart to ensure that we clear away those obstacles over the next few months.

“I very much hope that we will be in a position to reopen our respective embassies before the end of this year, and I look forward to going to Tehran to do so.”

Hammond will visit Israel this week for a meeting with the country’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who has warned the deal means “a sure path to nuclear weapons” for Iran.

The British embassy in Tehran was closed in 2011 and Iranian diplomats expelled from the UK after about 200 protesters from the youth wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards stormed the diplomatic compound. At the time, William Hague, then foreign secretary, said the protesters had the backing of the Iranian regime.

Negotiations on Tuesday in Vienna concluded with some international sanctions being lifted in exchange for inspections on the country’s nuclear programme, after 12 years of efforts to resolve the impasse.

Hammond told MPs the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb had been lifted, adding it was important that a religious edict had been enshrined prohibiting the construction of a nuclear weapon.

He said: “With the conclusion of these negotiations the world can be reassured that all Iranian roots to a nuclear bomb have been closed off and the world can have confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian civil nuclear programme going forward.”



Hammond said it would take Iran at least 12 months to acquire all the fissile material for a bomb, if it decided to renege on the agreement.

Dan Jarvis, Labour’s shadow foreign office minister, said the UK should be positive about the agreement, but also “go into it with our eyes wide open”.

“If there is a lesson to be drawn from the collapse of the agreed framework negotiated with North Korea by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, it is that the success of these agreements should be judged not over months but in years,” he said.

“It’s right some sanctions should be removed gradually and only as Iran honours the commitments it has made … It’s no secret that Iran has been involved for many years in exploiting sectarian tensions in the region, whether through proxy armies or support for terrorist groups.

“Those issues and difficulties in our own relationship with Iran will not go away overnight, but this agreement does present Iran with an opportunity to play a much more constructive global role – particularly with our shared interest in defeating the threat from Isil, or Daesh [Islamic State].”