Iran Blasts UK Defence Ministry’s Delay in Paying Its Debt

“The legal counsel of the UK Defence Ministry subsidiary company resorts to all possible procedural tactics and lawyerism to delay the payment of Iran’s debt,” Baeidinejad said on his Twitter account on Monday night.

“Pursuant to such efforts, the court decided TODAY to convene its next substantive session after 6 months, in March 2020,” he added in his tweet.

Back in July, a top court in Britain dismissed a complaint lodged by Iran seeking at least £20 million in interest for a debt related to the defense deals.

Judge Stephen Phillips from the High Court in London ruled that the UK does not have to pay the sum that Iran believes has accrued on £387 million owed to Tehran over the failed delivery of more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and armored vehicles based on contracts signed as of 1971.

The ruling dealt a fresh blow to efforts meant to reduce tensions between Iran and Britain as the two countries are locked in several disputes, including two recent ship seizure incidents and a high-profile legal case related to the imprisonment of dual nationals.

Britain has repeatedly refrained from paying the debt it acknowledges it owes to Iran, citing illegal sanctions imposed by the United States on Tehran.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once briefed the journalists in February 2018 after a trip to Tehran as foreign minister that the money will be paid back.

However, the payment never took place to the irritation of Tehran which thinks London is trying to use the case to solve other problems, including the much-publicized imprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British national who is in jail in Iran for espionage convictions.