A four-member parliamentary delegation from the UK has travelled to Tehran in the first such visit to Iran in five years as long-strained bilateral ties improve under the administration of President Hassan Rouhani.
Members of the all-party parliamentary group on Iran, led by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, arrived in Tehran on Tuesday after being invited by their counterparts in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis. They plan to meet senior Iranian officials and hope to arrange a reciprocal visit to London by Iranian MPs.
The visit comes a month after Britain's newly appointed chargé d'affaires, Ajay Sharma, travelled to Iran in a first diplomatic visit by a UK envoy since London withdrew all staff from Tehran after the storming of its embassy in 2011.
Although embassies still remain closed in their respective capitals, Britain and Iran have upgraded ties and taken significant steps towards reopening their missions since Rouhani took office. David Cameron and Rouhani also spoke on the phone in November in the first direct contact between a British prime minister and an Iranian president in a decade.
Straw's office in London said on Monday that the group visiting Iran also consisted of Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP who is a co-chairman of the Britain-Iran parliamentary friendship group, as well as the former chancellor of the exchequer Lord Lamont, and the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
"The trip is being supported by the UK branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Union [IPU], and is being made on a reciprocal basis," a statement from Jack Straw's office said. "It is hoped that whilst in Tehran the group will be able to make arrangements for a return delegation from the Majlis to visit the UK."
Iran's state-run Irna news agency quoted Hamed Qader–Marzi, of the Majlis's Iran-Britain parliamentary group, as saying that the UK parliamentarians were due to meet the speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, and the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. They are scheduled to spend two days in Tehran and will make brief visits to Isfahan and Shiraz, according to the local media. They are due to return to the UK on Friday.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "We are aware of Jack Straw MP's forthcoming visit to Iran. This is not a UK government visit. Mr Straw is visiting with members of the all-party parliamentary group on Iran." Straw's office said the Foreign Office had been "very helpful" in facilitating the visit.
Iranian hardliners, who have a deep suspicion of British politicians in general and have often accused London of meddling in the country's internal affairs, are nervous about the UK MPs' visit. They are particularly concerned because a similar visit last month by five members of the European parliament prompted anger among Iranian lawmakers when MEPs visited two prominent Iranian opposition activists: human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and celebrated film-maker Jafar Panahi.
Tarja Cronberg, the chair of the EU parliamentary Iran delegation, said that MEPs met the two figures on the first day of their visit to Tehran, in which they discussed the situation of human rights in the Islamic republic. Iranian MPs later condemned that meeting and reprimanded security authorities for their failure to stop that to happen.
Assuring hardliners, a senior Iranian MP, Shahin Mohammad Sadeghi, said on Sunday that the Iranian parliament had set pre-conditions for the British MPs and their programme in Iran had been scheduled in co-ordination with the Iranian authorities. "We have to make sure that this visit doesn't create any controversies," he said, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Following Sharma's visit to Iran, his counterpart, Mohammad-Hassan Habibollahzadeh, also visited London.
On the Iranian visit to London, an Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The chargé d'affaires, Mr Ajay Sharma, was pleased to welcome Mr Habibollahzadeh to the Foreign Office on 13 December. They had a productive meeting and continued the detailed discussions that were started in Tehran on improving UK-Iran bilateral relations on a step by step and reciprocal basis. The chargé will return to Tehran in January where he will build on positive talks and deliver concrete results for the benefit of the UK and Iran.
"We remain clear we will not have a diplomatic presence in Tehran until we have confidence that Iran will abide by its obligations to protect our staff and that our mission would be allowed to carry out its normal functions."
