Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has reopened the British embassy in Tehran, four years after Iranian protesters stormed the building and forced its closure.
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“Initially, the embassy will be led by a charge d’affaires with a small staff offering a limited range of consular services”.
Graffiti reading “Death to England” still adorns the doors to a grand reception room in a reminder of the storming.
The British embassy re open in Tehran after four years, Thenewstribe.com learnt from worldwide media. Talks for ambassadors will continue for the coming months.
“Encouraging trade and investment” will help ensure the success of the agreement, Hammond said in the Foreign Office statement. “We didn’t close the embassy, they left themselves”, he said.
“Maintaining dialogue even under the most hard conditions is crucially important”, Hammond said during a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
“There is a big deficit of trust at the moment”.
Zarif welcomed the reopening of the British Embassy, saying it showed Iran’s regional and global significance. “We need to start cooperation, not on a zero sum game but for mutual gain”.
Following a report on Iran’s nuclear programme from the worldwide Atomic Energy Agency, Britain imposed numerous sanction on Iran including banning all UK financial institutions from doing business with their counterparts in Iran.
Iran last month agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
While the attack in 2011 was a “low point”, Hammond said, the two countries’ relationship has steadily improved since Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013. First British Ministerial visit since 2003.
Following the 2011 embassy attack, Britain said it could not have happened without the tacit consent of the Iranian regime at the time.
On Sunday, however, the mission briefly became a symbol of how Iran’s relations with the West in general – and Britain in particular – have improved since the nuclear agreement announced in Vienna last month.
Britain also closed the Iranian Embassy in London and ordered all Iranian diplomats to leave.
Iran is simultaneously reopening its embassy in London.
In June past year, the then Foreign Secretary William Hague proposed the reopening of the embassy.
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A trade delegation has travelled to Tehran with Mr Hammond and the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Damian Hinds to discuss possible future trade opportunities.
