Iran has arrested a “spy” involved in the nuclear negotiations with world powers but has not yet formally charged the suspect, according to the judiciary’s spokesman.



Iranian media outlets reported on Sunday that a dual national identified as Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, a senior accountant involved in banking-related aspects of the nuclear talks, had been arrested for alleged espionage.

“(News of) the arrest of the infiltrating spy is true. Legal action has been instigated against him and he has been released on bail,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie as saying at his weekly press conference.

“But the charge against him has not been proven yet.”

On 16 August, the Tehran prosecutor announced the arrest of a British-Iranian on suspicion of links to Britain’s intelligence service.

Without naming the accused, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said on 16 August the suspect was “active in the field of the Iranian economy, and was linked to the British espionage service”.

But it remained unclear whether Dorri Esfahani and the British-Iranian were the same person.

Other reports said Dorri Esfahani was a dual Iranian-Canadian national. Quoting Iranian news reports from Wednesday 24 August, Associated Press said on Sunday that authorities had detained Dorri Esfahani, a dual Iranian-Canadian national and a member of the Ontario Institute of Chartered Accountants in Canada.

Iran and the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia negotiated for more than two years before signing a historic July 2015 agreement that removed some international sanctions in return for curbs on Tehran’s controversial atomic programme.



A conservative-linked weekly, Ramze Obour (which means Passcode in English), on 24 August Wednesday quoted hardline lawmaker Javad Karimi Ghodousi as saying Esfahani “bypassed the negotiating team and gave invaluable information to the US”.

It claimed he had been paid by both Britain and the United States.

However, the ISNA news agency said the accused was not a member of the negotiating team or the foreign ministry.

It said the accused “only appeared on the team at certain points, out of necessity on behalf of one of the country’s economic sectors”.