BICOM

Prime Minister Theresa May met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday in New York.

In a bilateral meeting held on the fringes of the UN General Assembly, Downing Street said that “the Prime Minister raised our consular cases in Iran, including that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The Prime Minister expressed her serious concern at Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ongoing detention, and called for her release,” it added.

Britain is seeking the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation who was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit. She was sentenced to five years in prison after being accused of spying.

May also reiterated the UK’s commitment to the JCPOA nuclear deal, telling President Rouhani that the UK will work to ensure that Iran receives economic benefits from the deal as long as it abides by its nuclear obligations. On Monday the remaining signatories of the JCPOA nuclear deal announced that they will establish a special channel to facilitate payments for Iran’s exports, including oil, as well as its imports, to shield companies from the effects of US secondary sanctions. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was ‘disturbed and deeply disappointed’ by the new initiative.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt met his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, also in New York yesterday. Hunt tweeted: “I pressed for swift resolution on all our dual national consular cases, including Nazanin. NOT acceptable to detain innocent people arbitrarily at the cost of enormous human anguish.”

US President Donald Trump attacked the Iranian leadership in his speech to the UN General Assembly. He accused the Islamic Republic of sowing “chaos, death and destruction” across the Middle East. “They do not respect their neighbours or borders or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond,” he added. President Trump will chair a special session of the UN Security Council today that will focus on proliferation issues. He is expected to call for tough action against Iran and urge fellow Security Council members to support US policy.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told UN delegates that “the US’s understanding of international relations is authoritarian. In its estimation might makes right. Its understanding of power, not of legal and legitimate authority, is reflected in bullying and imposition”.

He accused Israel of “blatantly threatening others with nuclear annihilation” and said the Jewish state constitutes “the most daunting threat to regional and global peace”.