The British Foreign Office has announced that two British nationals, one male and one woman, have been arrested in Iran.
Their arrest was first reported by Iran’s state-run media, which stated that they were in detention in the southeastern city of Kerman on undisclosed security charges.
It did not name them but did post an image of them, their faces blurred, meeting the British ambassador, Hugo Shorter, in the prosecutor’s office in Kerman on Wednesday.
The Foreign Office officially warns against all travel to Iran, stating that British and British-Iranian dual nationals face a “significant risk” of being arrested, questioned, or detained.
“Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain you,” the advice says.
The meeting between the Britons and the UK ambassador was also attended by Kerman’s prosecutor, Mehdi Bakhshi, and Rahman Jalali, the deputy governor general for security and law enforcement matters, according to state news agency IRNA.
In recent years, Iran has detained dozens of Iranians having dual nationality or foreign permanent residency, primarily on grounds of spying and national security. At least 15 have links to the United Kingdom.
According to human rights organizations, they are frequently detained as bargaining chips and released only when Iran receives something in exchange.
In 2023, Iran executed British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, who had been convicted of spying for the United Kingdom. He contested the charge, claiming he was tortured and made to confess on camera to crimes he did not commit.
Later that year, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, a dual UK-US-Iranian citizen, was one of five persons released as part of an Iran-US prisoner swap deal that also saw $6 billion (£4.8 billion) in blocked Iranian cash moved from South Korea.
British-Iranian citizens Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were released in 2022 and permitted to leave Iran after the UK resolved a long-standing £650 million debt with Iran.
