Zaghari-Ratcliffe - why doesn’t the U.K. pay what we owe Iran

Iran has no morals when it comes to the treatment of women, any women! She has been detained for another year on trumped up charges.

Iran is effectively blackmailing the UK.

Set the poor women free, and then the discussions and negotiations can commence.

How the UN can justify Iran being elected as the Commissioner to oversee women’s rights worldwide is a joke, accept it’s not funny!

We should never have kept the money. I understand we didn't want to supply the tanks but then should have just returned the money, that's only honest and fair.
It shows us in a very embarrassing light.
That poor lady and her family. I was concerned that something else would happen at the end of her previous sentence. I just hope somebody steps in and sorts it out for her.

Monica and Lemongrove, are you good Christians, I wonder?

I can’t believe the inhumanity that doesn’t want to take the opportunity to give back a mother to a young child, a wife to a young man and a life to a young woman.

lemongrove

Content is the wrong word.

But you think it’s acceptable? I think you’re playing with words.

Is it really "giving in" to pay off a debt you have incurred? I would have thought it was just morally good behaviour.

M0nica

It is not heartless to say we shouldn't pay up. This is effectively a ransom situation. Pay a ransom once and the price of getting the next person out will be even higher. And believe me there will be someone else and someone after that and so on.

Do not get me wrong, The current situation over Nazarin Zhagari-Radcliffe is appalling and I think the government efforts on her behalf have been inadequate. This situation should not have been allowed to go on so long.

There is anyway, no assurance that she would be let out if the money was paid. I wouldn't trust the Iranian government further than I could throw an elephant.

We owe the money- totally different.

And what if she was YOUR daughter- or your son's wife, and grand-daughter's mother.

She won't survive this time- I don't think. Poor woman and poor husband and daughter- breaks my heart for them.

The governments of both countries are disgusting for their treatment of this lady. Britain should pay its debts and allow her to go free. Her treatment is immoral.

Content is the wrong word.

lemongrove

Governments can’t give in to regimes such as Iran... there would always be other demands in the future and other people taken prisoner by them.Nobody should visit Iran, there is no compulsion to go there, and all Iranians in the West know that there is danger in returning.
I don’t suppose that she is the only Iranian/Other Nationality being held by them hoping to get some leverage with another country by false accusations, so what are they demanding?
They can’t all come from countries that owe them money historically, and our agreement was with the Shah presumably in the late sixties, early seventies.Iran is a pariah country who does whatever it wants as regards to prisoners and demands.

Do you are content for her to rot there?

Governments can’t give in to regimes such as Iran... there would always be other demands in the future and other people taken prisoner by them.Nobody should visit Iran, there is no compulsion to go there, and all Iranians in the West know that there is danger in returning.
I don’t suppose that she is the only Iranian/Other Nationality being held by them hoping to get some leverage with another country by false accusations, so what are they demanding?
They can’t all come from countries that owe them money historically, and our agreement was with the Shah presumably in the late sixties, early seventies.Iran is a pariah country who does whatever it wants as regards to prisoners and demands.

lemongrove

M0nica

It is not heartless to say we shouldn't pay up. This is effectively a ransom situation. Pay a ransom once and the price of getting the next person out will be even higher. And believe me there will be someone else and someone after that and so on.

Do not get me wrong, The current situation over Nazarin Zhagari-Radcliffe is appalling and I think the government efforts on her behalf have been inadequate. This situation should not have been allowed to go on so long.

There is anyway, no assurance that she would be let out if the money was paid. I wouldn't trust the Iranian government further than I could throw an elephant.

I fully agree.

So what would you do? Just leave her there?

M0nica

It is not heartless to say we shouldn't pay up. This is effectively a ransom situation. Pay a ransom once and the price of getting the next person out will be even higher. And believe me there will be someone else and someone after that and so on.

Do not get me wrong, The current situation over Nazarin Zhagari-Radcliffe is appalling and I think the government efforts on her behalf have been inadequate. This situation should not have been allowed to go on so long.

There is anyway, no assurance that she would be let out if the money was paid. I wouldn't trust the Iranian government further than I could throw an elephant.

I fully agree.

MayBee70

Why do they have to explore legal ways to pay back a debt that we, in law, have to pay back? This doesn’t make sense.

It’s because of the sanctions issue I believe

Why do they have to explore legal ways to pay back a debt that we, in law, have to pay back? This doesn’t make sense.

It’s not just her, either.
They are actually holding quite a number of people. But she is the “poster girl” here I feel.

However. The fact that this has been to international arbitration and we have been told to pay up, is enough. In my opinion we should have paid up at once. We should do so now, irrespective of the situation with this one poor woman (which of course is deeply deeply sad).

From the Guardian last summer

‘The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has for the first time acknowledged that he is actively seeking to pay a debt to the Iranian government that could finally help to secure the release of British dual nationals including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Wallace assured lawyers acting for the families that the government was exploring every legal avenue to pay the debt, which for the first time he formally acknowledged the government owes.

The admission came in a letter to the lawyers acting for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran in jail and then house arrest

The UK is thought to owe as much as £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain tanks ordered by the Shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979.

An international arbitration in 2008 ruled the UK owed the debt, but in subsequent protracted court battles, lawyers acting for International Military Services, the Ministry of Defence’s now-defunct arms sales agency, have questioned not only the debt’s size, but at times whether any debt was payable.

Neither Iran nor the UK government formally acknowledge that the release of UK dual nationals in Iranian jails is linked to the non-payment of the debt, although the issue has been raised by Iranian judges and is privately seen as the chief roadblock.

The former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said Wallace “has done something brave and important”. He added: “If Nazanin is released soon I believe this acknowledgement of our historic debt will have played an important part.”

In his letter, Wallace writes: “With regard to IMS Ltd and the outstanding legal dispute the government acknowledges there is a debt to be paid and continues to explore every legal avenue for the lawful discharge of that debt.”

Whitewavemark2

It isn’t a ransom, we owe the money.

It is leverage.

This a thousand times - Monica I can’t believe what you posted.

It isn’t a ransom, we owe the money.

It is leverage.

It is not heartless to say we shouldn't pay up. This is effectively a ransom situation. Pay a ransom once and the price of getting the next person out will be even higher. And believe me there will be someone else and someone after that and so on.

Do not get me wrong, The current situation over Nazarin Zhagari-Radcliffe is appalling and I think the government efforts on her behalf have been inadequate. This situation should not have been allowed to go on so long.

There is anyway, no assurance that she would be let out if the money was paid. I wouldn't trust the Iranian government further than I could throw an elephant.

Horrified to hear the latest news. This poor woman and her family. We should pay up it’s the only decent thing to do.

Poor woman - and poor husband and daughter. A little while ago I read about ideas to pay the debt by providing goods in kind allowed under the sanctions such as COVID vaccines but that idea seems to have disappeared. The despair they must all be feeling - it’s like the Cat and Mouse tactics used against the suffragettes. The emotional toil must be horrendous. Pretty heartless to post we shouldn’t pay up because they’ll just want more.

It's quite simple the Americans have told us not to. The US sanctions against Iran have caused problems for Iranian students studying in the UK who have been unable to pay fees, many european banks have been fined by the US and the latest thing is they have blocked funding and stopped Covid vaccine to Iran.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_against_Iran

The government knows that if they repay the money Ratcliffewill be released, they have said as much since her imprisonment.

What’s to say they won’t come up with more trumped up charges in a year’s time. That poor woman and her family.

I believe there are others in prison there too who should have been released. It is a never ending nightmare.