Egypt's Sisi Hosts Israel's Bennett, UAE's Sheikh Mohammed
Egypt hosted Israel's prime minister and the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates Monday, sources said, as talks to revive the Iran deal remain in limbo.
Egypt hosted Israel's prime minister and the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates Monday, sources said, as talks to revive the Iran deal remain in limbo.
Although there was no official announcement about the presence of Israel’s Naftali Bennett, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi his guests held discussions that covered the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Persian Gulf states were excluded from talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that they have criticized for not addressing Iran's missiles program and regional proxies, including in Yemen.
Egypt's presidency said Sisi and the UAE's Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan held expanded bilateral talks on issues including economic investment, in the Red Sea Resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Sisi stressed Egypt's commitment to security in the Persian Gulf and "rejection of any practices that seek to destabilize it," the presidency said in a statement.
The UAE along with Saudi Arabia has resisted Western calls to hike oil output and contain a jump in crude prices caused by the conflict in Ukraine.
Egypt faces new economic pressures due to the war that saw it devalue its currency by 14% on Monday. It has called on financial support from wealthy Gulf states in the past.
Bennett visited Egypt last September, the first official trip by an Israeli head of government to the country in a decade.
"That is unprecedented given the politics of the UK…What's happened now should have happened six years ago. I shouldn't have been in prison for six years," Zaghari-Ratcliffe said at a press conference in Westminster Monday, days after she regained her freedom.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's MP Tulip Siddiq said she would be calling for a review by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British parliament to investigate the delay in her release.
She was freed after the UK paid a four-decade-old £400m ($522 million) debt to Iran. Iranian state media in 2021 cited unidentified Iranian officials as saying that the British-Iranian aid worker would be freed once the debt had been paid. Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian last week claimed that the payment by Britain had nothing to do with the release of the Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.
At the press conference she pointed out that "justice in Iran does not have any meaning" and apparently referring to Iran's negotiations with world powers over its nuclear issue, said that the freedom of dual nationals "should not be linked to international agreements."
Zaghari-Ratcliffe disclosed that soon after her arrest Iranian interrogators told her that she will be freed when the UK pays the money.
Following her release, Iran’s hardliner media continued to accuse her and other British- Iranian detainees of spying and highlighted that Tehran got paid to free them.
Recalling her experience in detention, she said it would always "haunt" her but declined to speak about her ordeal in solitary confinement, presumably due to the presence of her seven-year-old daughter Gabriella at the press conference.
The British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed credit for negotiating a furlough for British-American-Iranian wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz, along with the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.
"The world should come together to help other prisoners," she said, referring to other dual nationals still held in Iran including Tahbaz.
Morad Tahbaz, 66, was released from prison on furlough on the same day Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori left Iran to return to Britain.
Tahbaz's daughter, Roxanne, said Monday he had been taken back to prison two days after being released on furlough. She was in the press conference by the invitation of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and read a statement to bring attention to her father's circumstances and the family's plight. The family say he has gone on hunger strike.
“It’s been over four years now since my father was detained and my mother was put on a travel ban in Iran,” his daughter told the press conference Monday. "I’m here today to ask the question of why my father is the only UK-born national who has been abandoned and left behind there.”
Tahbaz's family fear he may fall through the diplomatic cracks with his triple nationality.
"He did not think that the UK government would abandon him. He was born in the UK," a family member who asked not to be identified told the BBC.
Tahbaz was arrested during a crackdown on environmental activists in January 2018.
There were contradictory statements on Monday whether he was taken to a “residential place” or was still in prison.
There are two more British-Iranian citizens still behind bars in Iran, labor rights activist Mehran Raoof and lawyer Shahram Shirkhani both of whom are serving ten years in jail for alleged spying.
Iran is still holding several other western dual nationals including American-Iranians Siyamak Namazi and his elderly father Bagher, American-Iranian businessman Emad Sharghi, and German-Iranian rights activist Nahid Taghavi.
