UK urges Iran to end hostilities

LONDON

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday urged Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani to bring an “end to hostilities” in the region.

A Downing Street statement said the two leaders “discussed the situation in the region following the death of Qasem Soleimani and the Prime Minister [Johnson] called for an end to hostilities.”

Johnson “underlined the U.K.’s continued commitment to the JCPoA [The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and to ongoing dialogue to avoid nuclear proliferation and reduce tensions,” the statement said.

He also raised the continued “detention and mistreatment” of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and “other dual nationals in Iran and called for their immediate release,” according to the statement.

The tensions in the region have run high since the killing of an Iranian top general in an airstrike by the US.

Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force, and nine others, including Abu-Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi group, were killed by a U.S. airstrike on Jan. 3 near Baghdad International Airport.

Iran on Wednesday targeted the US forces in Iraq by attacking military bases with ballistic missiles, a move condemned by British officials, including Johnson.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of spying for an illegal group by an Iranian court.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 between Iran and Russia, China, France, the U.K. and the U.S. plus Germany, known as the P5+1.