UK bids to blackmail Iran will never work: Top diplomat

A senior Iranian diplomat has hit back at the British prime minister for pressuring Tehran to “immediately” release a dual national, who has been held in Iran for four years, saying London’s efforts to blackmail Tehran by taking its own money hostage in exchange for inmates will fail.

Iran’s outgoing deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, made the remarks in a post on his official Twitter account on Saturday in response to a Friday tweet by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reiterated his “call for Iran to do the right thing” and immediately release Anoosheh Ashoori -- a British-Iranian dual national on the fourth anniversary of his arrest in Tehran.