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Background: the old tank deal
• In the 1970s, under the rule of the Shah, Iran ordered a large fleet of British military hardware: more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and around 250 armoured recovery vehicles, under a deal worth roughly £650 million, paid in advance.
• By the time of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, only 185 tanks had been delivered. The rest of the order was cancelled. Iran demanded a refund for the undelivered equipment.
• Over the ensuing decades, a protracted legal and diplomatic battle ensued. Arbitrators and courts eventually ruled that the UK owed Iran compensation — a sum often estimated at around £400 million (plus interest).
Thus, the “tank deal” is not a hypothetical conspiracy — it is a real, documented arms-sale agreement that collapsed when geopolitical change overtook it, and which left the UK with a long-running debt to Iran.
What Boris Johnson has said (or admitted)
In a recent interview, Boris Johnson reportedly acknowledged that the UK has a legitimate case to repay Iran for this debt — thereby conceding that the UK was indeed “on the hook” over the cancelled 1970s tank sale.
More concretely:
• In 2021, while Foreign Secretary, Johnson told a parliamentary committee that it might be “worth considering” sending a plane with a “crate of cash” to Iran to repay the debt, if banking sanctions made conventional payment impossible.
• He acknowledged the moral and legal obligation, saying that — in an ideal world — the repayment could “snap of the fingers” be done. But he added that “there are complexities attached,” notably international sanctions on Iran.
Thus, Johnson’s remarks make clear he and the UK government no longer deny responsibility — but that delivering on it has been complicated by geopolitical and legal constraints.
The “Conspiracy”: Why many believe this is more than just a debt
Although the “tank deal” itself dates from the 1970s, many observers see the continued failure to repay — coupled with the ongoing detention of dual British-Iranian nationals — as part of a deliberate diplomatic leverage strategy. Key points:
• Among those detained by Iran was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman arrested in 2016 and convicted on charges Iran says involve spying or propaganda. Her supporters (and some former UK officials) have argued she was being held, at least in part, as “bargaining chip” in order to pressure the UK over the unresolved tank-debt.
• Critics in the UK have accused the government of “double-dealing,” arguing that ministers repeatedly promised to repay the debt — even floated paying cash — but then balked because of sanctions or political pressure.
• Some see the long delay in repayment — decades after legal rulings — not as a mere bureaucratic hang-up, but as a strategic delay: by withholding payment, the UK retains a point of leverage, while publicly rejecting any formal link to detainees’ fate.
In this view, the “conspiracy” is less about secret deals than about the conscious use of financial and diplomatic indebtedness — and human lives — as bargaining chips in geo-political negotiations.
Recent Resolution — and Continuing Questions
• On 16 March 2022, the UK authorised payment of about £393.8 million to Iran — believed to settle the debt for the undelivered tanks. The payment was reportedly ring-fenced for humanitarian use, to comply with sanctions.
• On the same day, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released and returned to the UK. Many have interpreted the near-simultaneity of payment and release as confirmation that the long-standing debt indeed played a critical role.
• However — official British statements maintain that the debt payment and the release of detainees were “parallel issues,” not a transaction; and Iranian officials have varied in their narrative, meaning clarity is elusive.
Thus — while a “resolution” was reached, the manner, timing, and opacity of the process continues to fuel suspicion and accusations of back-room diplomatic bargaining.
Why it matters — then and now
1. Legacy of arms trade duplicity: The tank-sale saga is emblematic of a darker history in which Western powers sold weapons to authoritarian or soon-to-be authoritarian states, then later retracted delivery — all while keeping the money. The 1970s-80s deals left deep scars of mistrust in the Middle East.
2. Diplomacy as hostage negotiation: The intersection of human rights (detained British-Iranian citizens), legal debt, and statecraft raises troubling questions about the ethics of using individuals as bargaining chips — even indirectly.
3. Sanctions & law vs. pragmatism: The UK’s difficulty in simply paying the debt because of sanctions illustrates the tangled web of modern geopolitics: legal obligations, moral responsibility, and international constraints often collide.
4. Precedent for future arms-related disputes: How this case was handled (with decades of litigation, stalling, and eventual payoff) sets a precedent for how Western governments might deal with other cancelled arms deals or historical obligations — and whether nations hold fast, or eventually cave.
Conclusion
The recent interview and admissions by Boris Johnson reopened old wounds — but also shone a spotlight on a decades-long saga of arms, money, and diplomacy. What began as a 1970s arms contract ended in revolution, non-delivery and decades of legal limbo. What followed became tangled in human suffering, with detainees caught in a web of international politics.
That the UK finally paid the debt — and that the payment coincided with the release of a detained British citizen — will not, for many critics, erase the sense of a cynical “deal.” Instead it reinforces the view that states often treat even human lives as negotiable assets in geopolitical bargaining.
Attached is a news article regarding boris Johnson interview on a old tank deal with Iran
Article written and configured by Christopher Stanley
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