The foreign office minister Alistair Burt arrived in Iran on Friday for the first such visit in several months, for talks on the imprisoned British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, as well as the future of the Iran nuclear deal. Burt, the minister for the Middle East, is the first UK minister to visit the country since the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May, dismaying the UK and other European nations.

He arrives two days after Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken to a prison hospital after a panic attack, following her return to jail from three days on temporary release with her daughter and other family members. Earlier in the week Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who has spent two years seeking her release over claims of spying, praised the new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for taking a closer interest in the matter than his predecessor, Boris Johnson.(theguardian)…[+]