UK to pay Iran £400million

"IMS is a private limited company but is owned by the Government. It is rightly subject to, and will comply with, UK and international law." It is unclear why, a year on, the Iranians have not yet applied for the cash. The Iranian side has yet to make a comment.

But one immediate reason is that even if they do, the cash will not be transferred straight to Iran. It will join Pounds 976 million of Iranian assets that have been frozen in a special account in Britain by European Union sanctions since the revolution.

Officials say the loss of the money will not affect Britain's already large budget deficit. In 2002, the government lodged £486 million with the High Court pending judgement - in excess of the £390 million that seems set to be repaid.

So actually we are not paying them anything.
 
You can't ever read the headline from the link you posted :rolleyes:

To save wear and tear on your brain and fingers, it reads:

"Britain to pay back Iran £400 million"
 
Given they choose to ignore various rulings and sanctions, so should we.

Although that runs the risk of making us no better than them, one that might be worth taking given the current economic climate. :p
 
I wonder if the US paid back all the money that Iran paid them for military hardware which was not delivered?? The US supplied most of the Iranian armed forces equipment in the 1970s.
 
The good old USA and UK, arms dealers selling to whoever has the cash and arming people for decades of war that we'll eventually get into, absolute genius.

If anything the events in the past 15-20 years should have taught the USA/UK to stop selling weapons, planes, tanks, boats completely because you don't know what war you're helping keep going in the future, but we're still happy to send weapons all over the place.
 
if they didnt have them how could we invade there and destroy them then sell contracts to rebuild and mine/drill/grow profits? :O

+we sell 2nd rate versions just like the ruskies to johny foreigner
 
The fact is that the military industrial complex employs hundreds of thousands of people in this country. We sell weapons since it is a very profitable industry.

+we sell 2nd rate versions just like the ruskies to johny foreigner

In most cases this maybe true but I am not so sure with Iran in the 1970s. An example is the Shir2 MBT which we were going to sell to them. The Shir2 would probably have been more advanced than the Chieftains we had at the time - after all it was modified to become the Challenger 1 MBT.

It is also hard to say with Russia nowadays as their military industrial complex is dependent on foreign orders.
 
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Basic history is - if I'm not confused or mistaken - that Britain, Israel and USA were doing deals with Iran on a credit-basis prior to the Islamic Revolution. When the revolution occured and over-threw the old regime which was West-friendly, the countries listed above decided not to recognise the new anti-West regime and thus, not pay (I actually agree with this considering the circumstances at the time).

It feels a little cheap that we've been ruled to pay the money owed, but I suppose from one perspective we were crafty in trying to get something for nothing.
 
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