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UK 'Intensifies' Talks on Freeing Zaghari From Iran

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, “has begun counting down the weeks” before she is able to fly home. (File: Reuters)
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, “has begun counting down the weeks” before she is able to fly home. (File: Reuters)
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UK 'Intensifies' Talks on Freeing Zaghari From Iran

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, “has begun counting down the weeks” before she is able to fly home. (File: Reuters)
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, “has begun counting down the weeks” before she is able to fly home. (File: Reuters)

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the UK has “intensified” negotiations with Iran to release Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual citizen, from “arbitrary detention”, adding that they were “pushing very hard” to free her.

She has been arrested since 2016. She was handed a five-year imprisonment sentence for charges of sedition.

After the outbreak of the pandemic, the former employee at Thomson Reuters Foundation was placed under the electronic wristband system.

Britain is "pushing as hard as we can to get the immediate release, not in seven weeks, but as soon as possible, of Nazanin and all of our other dual nationals", Raab told Sky News.

He said Britain is “pushing as hard as it can” to free her, and negotiations with Iran had “intensified” recently.

The British foreign secretary added that the incoming Biden administration in the US offers “additional possibilities” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe to leave Iran.

AFP reported Nazanin’s husband as he welcomed the negotiations between Raab and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. He noted that Zaghari has created a seven-week countdown calendar on the wall of her bedroom. On the last week of the calendar, she has written “freedom.”

Zaghari was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016 after visiting her family. She was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

In spring, she was put under house arrest at her parents’ house in Tehran.

A second legal procedure was taken against her for spreading propaganda against the regime, but the trial was postponed at the beginning of November.

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IAEA Demands Access to Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks during a press conference on the opening day of his agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 3, 2025. (Reuters) 
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks during a press conference on the opening day of his agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 3, 2025. (Reuters) 
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IAEA Demands Access to Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks during a press conference on the opening day of his agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 3, 2025. (Reuters) 
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks during a press conference on the opening day of his agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 3, 2025. (Reuters) 

US bombing probably caused “very significant” damage to the underground areas of Iran's Fordow uranium enrichment plant dug into a mountain, though no one can yet tell the extent, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday.

In a statement to an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation Board of Governors, Grossi appealed for immediate access to Iran’s targeted sites to assess the damage.

The United States dropped the biggest conventional bombs in its arsenal on Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday, using those bunker-busting munitions in combat for the first time to try to eliminate sites including the Fordow uranium-enrichment plant dug into a mountain.

“At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow,” Grossi said.

He said that taking into account the highly explosive payload used in the US attacks, “very significant damage is expected to have occurred” to the highly sensitive centrifuge machinery used to enrich uranium at Fordow.

Grossi then voiced fears over “potential widening” of the Middle East conflict. “We have a window of opportunity to return to dialogue and diplomacy,” he said.

Beyond the level of damage done to Fordow's underground enrichment halls, one of the biggest open questions is the status of its stock of enriched uranium, particularly its more than 400 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from the roughly 90% that is weapons grade.

That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick, though Iran says its intentions are peaceful and it does not seek atomic bombs.

Iran did, however, inform the IAEA on June 13 that it would take “special measures” to protect its nuclear materials and equipment that are under so-called IAEA safeguards, the oversight provided for by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Grossi said.

“In my response that same day, I indicated that any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location in Iran must be declared to the agency,” Grossi said.

He noted that craters are visible at the Fordow site, indicating the use by the United States of ground penetrating munitions.

For his part, McCoy Pitt, Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of International Organization Affairs said at the IAEA meeting on Monday that the urgent threat from Iran’s enrichment program cannot be ignored or explained away.

He said any allegation that the IAEA played any role in the US actions is baseless and should be rejected.

This week, a parliamentary committee had proposed a bill to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to ban Grossi from visiting Iran.

Meanwhile, the ambassadors of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries accredited to the IAEA have jointly called for an immediate halt to regional escalation.

The GCC statement reaffirmed the group’s unwavering support for peaceful conflict resolution, highlighting the importance of learning from past crises.