British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond will visit Iran this weekend to formally re-open the U.K. embassy in Tehran, according to Foreign & Commonwealth Office and media reports.
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Hammond will be accompanied on his visit by a handful of British business leaders as well as the foreign office political director, Sir Simon Gass, who represented British in the marathon talks leading up to the July nuclear agreement.
The diplomatic thaw comes after a nuclear deal was recently reached between Tehran and six other world powers, including the UK.
The British Embassy in Tehran, closed after Iranian protesters stormed it during a demonstration protesting the imposed British sanctions in 2011, will reopen again for the first time in four years.
Hammond will be Britain’s first top diplomat to visit the Iranian capital in nearly 14 years.
Iran and Britain severed their diplomatic ties in November 2011.
The official said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who helped negotiate a historic deal between Iran and the West on the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme, “will travel on Sunday to Iran for the reopening of the British embassy”. He will meet the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other senior figures including the Iranian ministers of industries and business, petroleum and transport.
A new ambassador to Tehran hasn’t been announced but the current nonresident chargé d’affaires, Ajay Sharma, will lead a team of diplomats in the interim. Then-Foreign Secretary William Hague told Parliament at the time that the closure of the embassy reduced relations with Iran to the lowest level possible.
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Last month David Cameron moved to reassure Gulf allies that the nuclear deal will not result in any lessening of pressure on Tehran over its support for terrorism and its destabilising influence in the region.
