Iranian Official: Still No Talk of Ambassadors in Tehran, London

Iranian men walk past the closed British embassy in the capital Tehran, on August 21, 2015.

Hammond said discussions on the sidelines of the nuclear talks and last year’s U.N. General Assembly had shown what could be gained from direct dialogue, but acknowledged that there would continue to be areas where the two nations disagree.

The reopened British embassy will be staffed initially by a small number of diplomats led by Ajay Sharma, who has been non-resident chargé d’affaires since 2013.

At the ceremony Mr Hammond said the attack in 2011 had been “a low point” but since the election of President Hassan Rouhani things had “steadily improved, step by step”. “I believe we have the potential to go much further”.

Groups of local and foreign media, as well as hundreds of people, were present in front of the British embassy to witness the reopening of the embassy which was stormed by a group of angry Iranian students in 2011 to protest Britain’s nuclear-related sanctions.

Hammond’s visit comes weeks after Iran reached a deal with six world powers aimed at curbing its nuclear programme.

In an interview in this otherwise elegant example of Victorian architecture, Mr Hammond told the Telegraph why he had not insisted on Iran paying for the damage as a precondition for reopening the Embassy.

Kowsari called on Iran’s security and intelligence agencies to carefully watch British Embassy operations and “prevent conspiracies by the British government before they are carried out”. The two had a meeting in New York last September – the first between leaders of the countries since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. And embassies are the primary means of achieving this.

“Encouraging trade and investment” will help ensure the success of the agreement, Hammond said in the Foreign Office statement.

The two countries should also be able to discuss shared challenges including terrorism, regional stability, the spread of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, drugs trafficking and migration, Hammond said. Big opportunities but we know that there will be areas where we continue to disagree, and sometimes disagree strongly. It is the first visit by a British foreign secretary to Iran since 2003.

Following the incident, Britain withdrew its diplomatic staff from Tehran on November 30 and asked Iran’s diplomatic delegation in London to leave within 48 hours.