UK wants to pay off 'legitimate debt' it owes Iran, FM Truss says

The UK wants to pay off long-standing and "legitimate" debt it owes Iran, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Wednesday.

Tehran has urged the UK to pay off the £400 million debt, a sum the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi paid more than four decades ago for tanks that were never delivered. The money is widely thought to be a sticking point in the release of dual British-Iranian nationals held in Iran.

After Truss gave a keynote speech on the UK's foreign policy priorities at Chatham House in London, she was asked why the UK had not paid Iran back.

"We are working to resolve this issue," Truss responded. "We do want to pay this debt, we recognise that it is a legitimate debt."

Truss said she and Minister of State for Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly had spoken to Iranian officials on multiple occasions to resolve the issue.

British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are held in Iran on charges of espionage. Their families have campaigned tirelessly to press the UK government to get them released and strongly deny the charges.

"I'm also pressing for the return of our unfairly detained British nationals including Nazanin, and we are working night and day to make that happen," Truss said.

The latest round of discussions in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal began Thursday, but tensions were high after Iran made demands that European countries found to be unacceptable.

Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment programme after the US pulled out of the deal in 2018. Western powers said they feared Iran would soon be able to enrich uranium to the level needed for nuclear weapons.

Truss said on Wednesday that the UK would "work night and day to prevent the Iranian regime from ever getting a nuclear weapon".