Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a convict being held in Iranian prisons for security offenses.

Iranian Intelligence authorities arrested Zaghari at the Imam Khomeini International Airport on April 3, 2016, on her way to London where she has been residing after visiting her parents in Tehran.

The 39-year-old was arrested after it became clear that she had run an illegal course to recruit and train people for the Persian service of the BBC, which is a major party to the “soft war” being waged by the West against Tehran, according to Iranian officials.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe had initially been sentenced to five years in jail on charges relating to national security, but authorities later opened her case and tried her on additional charges based on new evidence including a BBC paycheck and contents of her personal email.

She has another open case and the first court session on it will be held on Sunday, March 14.

Her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the Iranian website Emtedad on Sunday that her five-year prison sentence for plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment was complete.

“She was pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader last year but spent the last year of her term under house arrest with electronic shackles tied to her feet. Now they’re cast off,” Kermani told the website. “She has been freed.”

Iran’s judiciary officials have yet to comment on the release.

In practice, the news means she has been released from the ankle tag that keeps her within 300 meters of her parents’ home, but since she is facing a set of charges this Sunday she is unlikely to be given back her passport, which she would need to return to the UK.

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said: “We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle tag, but Iran’s continued treatment of her is intolerable. She must be allowed to return to the UK as soon as possible to be reunited with her family.”

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These days the market for divulging in the media space has become the lead stories and every media, which can afford to arrange an interview with any informed person, publishes an interview with him/her worth publishing and it goes viral for some time depending on the type of the interview and disclosure, and it changes hands, and of course that is the task of media.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

One of these divulgences was BBC’s interview with former Qatar Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jabor bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani which was just done last week in which he unveiled some important events and events resulted by the heavy costs which were paid to heal the anger of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in facing Iran for keeping resistance base in Syria with leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In this interview with BBC, Hamad bin Jassim disclosed new secrets about Syria’s crisis and the imposed war of arrogant countries on this country which broke out in March 2011 and some of them still continue in the region.

Nine years have passed since the outbreak of the imposed war and invasion against Syria and several times the destructive role of the U.S., UK and Zionist Regime with support of the countries in the region like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Turkey has been proved, and the role of any one of the belligerents in confronting with the Resistance Axis, in its own place, has been of the most important factors in prolongation of this crisis all these years.

Now the former Qatari Prime Minister, who had a special role in this maelstrom of corruption, today due to Britain’s need has come on the stage to disclose parts of these secrets, and in his new interview has displayed another curtain of this war. On the support from Syrian opposition in the Syrian Army and encouraging them to defect the Syrian Armed forces, Al Thani says, “$30,000 was paid too any Syrian military officer who defected the Army and we paid $15,000 to military staff with lower rankings.”

He adds, “Saudi Arabia paid $50m reward to the then Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab for his opposition and weakening Bashar Assad.”  He then continued that since the first day of the war till now some $137b has been spent, disclosing, “Leaders of the armed groups have used the abundance of facilities and huge budgets who were receiving and became millionaires.”

“The operation for encouraging the military staff from the Army and Syrian Armed forces was often carried out with financial promises and incentives as I said before, $30,000 was paid to the senior military men and $15,000 to the lower military ranks. Riyad Hijab’s defection from the Syrian establishment was in coordination with his cousin who had been living in Jordan years ago and after defection, Saudi Arabia also paid him $50m reward,” the Qatari said.

Al Thani also talked about Manaf Tlass, an elite former Brigadier General of the Syrian Republican Guard and Assad’s close friend, saying, “Defection of Tlass happened after coordination between France’s intelligence system and Tlass’s sister Nahed who was widow of famous Syrian-born Saudi businessman merchant Akram Ojjeh who had resided in France years ago and had been granted the French citizenship.”

Former Qatari Prime Minister in his interview also points to the then Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri, claiming Hariri had received $100m as reward for defections of military men and the then Syrian officials.

Al Thani further said, “Hariri played an important and effective role in Syria war and he had handed over his office in the city of Gaziantep of Turkey to Okab Sakr, the then Lebanon parliament member, to run it. Sakr also received $10m as reward for his services because he disclosed the role of the then Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Syria’s crisis,” and reminded, “Najib Mikati is one of the other Lebanese personalities who played an important role in Syria’s crisis through Lebanon’s Police Chief Brigadier General Ashraf Rifi and received $50m as reward for playing this role.”

The former Qatari Prime Minister in his interview with BBC also touched upon the very important role of Iraqi Kurds in war against Syria especially to the very important role of Masoud Barzani’s in this regard. In the last part of his interview, Al Thani admits that they have played a great role in destroying popular revolutions of Egypt, Libya and infrastructures of Syria and Yemen and all these actions and measures have been carried out in coordination with the U.S. and its order.

What is very evident is that all-out activities of anti-Resistance Axis camp has suffered heavy costs but they have not even achieved the least success. It is wonder that this divulgence by the former Qatar Prime Minister is one of the hundreds of cost processes and uselessness for exerting pressure on the Resistance Axis that all of them with the $7,000b, revealed and mentioned, dimension by U.S. President Donald Trump has been doomed to absolute failure.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian

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He further stressed that the United States cannot “stop” Iran and Iraq’s mutual relations, stressing that Tehran is not after competing with Washington in Iraq either.

“We have good relations with Iraq. Iraq is our neighbor,” the Iranian foreign minister said, adding that not even former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hossein’s 1980-88 war on the Islamic Republic managed to separate the two nations, ending the historical, geographical, and even family ties between the two countries.

Commenting on the nature of the visit, Zarif said, “I do not believe that we are here either to take a measure against any country [or] to seek intervention on behalf of Iran with any country.” “Our positions have been very clear, and we called for dialogue.”

He asserted that the Islamic Republic maintains a regional strategy called “a stronger region rather than strong countries or strong men in this region.” “We have had enough of strong men, we need a strong region,” he noted.

Separately in the interview, Zarif commented on a payment mechanism that European countries have announced to safeguard trade with Iran.

The UK, France, and Germany, three of the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement, issued a joint statement on January 31, announcing the launch of the long-awaited direct non-dollar payment mechanism meant to protect their trade ties with the country in the face of the United States sanctions.

The U.S. left the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), last May, defying the fact that it had been ratified in the form of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Washington afterwards returned the sanctions that it had lifted under the accord.

Zarif said the European mechanism alone “does not solve all of Iran’s problems.” Nor does it realize all of Europe’s commitments as a partner to the JCPOA, he added.

He also commented on tensions between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia, saying, “We are prepared for cooperation with Saudi Arabia, but they should acknowledge that their security is tied to ours and our security is tied to theirs.”

Saudi Arabia broke off its diplomatic ties with Iran in early 2016 after protests in front of its Iran-based diplomatic missions against Riyadh’s earlier execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent pro-democracy Saudi Shia cleric.

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