Conflicting Reports on the 'Arrest' of a Member of Iran's Nuclear Negotiation Team

One day after the Iranian Foreign Ministry described the 'arrest of one of the staff members of the JCPOA implementation office on charges of espionage' as 'completely baseless', the Nasim Online website published further details about the arrest of an individual identified as the 'banking official of the nuclear negotiation team'. On Wednesday, September 3, the Nasim Online website quoted the Telegram channel 'Special News Monitoring Section' as saying that the arrested individual is a 'dual national' who, according to this Telegram channel, 'in addition to government and private economic activities, is responsible for one of the important committees of the negotiating team and represents one of the financial institutions in this team'. A week earlier, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran Prosecutor, had reported in an interview without providing details about the arrest of a dual national in Tehran 'on charges of espionage for the British intelligence service'. It is still unclear whether the dual national arrested, which the Tehran Prosecutor mentioned, is the same person referred to as a member of Iran's nuclear negotiation team. While on Tuesday the Iranian Foreign Ministry described the 'arrest of one of the staff members of the JCPOA implementation office on charges of espionage' as 'completely baseless', Yasser Jabari, the research deputy of the Fars News Agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards, revealed the name of the arrested individual and identified him as Abdolrasool Dari Esfahani, the banking official of the negotiating team and a British national, who, according to the Fars news agency deputy, 'is in custody on charges of espionage'. In the Nasim Online report detailing the reasons for the arrest of Abdolrasool Dari Esfahani, one of the charges mentioned is 'receiving salaries from American and British institutions in exchange for providing important financial and economic information about the Islamic Republic'. According to this website, Mr. Dari Esfahani 'was one of the high earners of the government under the guise of consulting and board membership in some banks'. Hamid Rasai, a former member of parliament who is considered a member of the Stability Front and close to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has been opposed to the JCPOA, also published a photo of Dari Esfahani on his Instagram page. Previously, in June 2016, the Rajanews website, which is close to hardline conservatives and the Stability Front, published a report titled 'The Ambiguous Role of the Canadian Element of Bank Saman in the Continuation of Banking Sanctions after the JCPOA!', introducing Abdolrasool Dari Esfahani as a 'non-banking individual with accounting experience in British and Canadian institutions'. According to Rajanews, Dari Esfahani was a board member of Bank Saman, who along with two other board members of this bank, Mr. Zarabieh and Manzoori, 'has extensive connections with England'. However, Dari Esfahani, who is currently a non-executive board member of Asia Insurance and an advisor to Valiollah Seif, the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, on Wednesday, September 3, in an interview with the 'Bank-e Mardom' website, called the news related to his arrest 'ridiculous' and emphasized: 'As I am speaking to you, I am at the Central Bank and have not been arrested.' The 'Bank-e Mardom' website and other websites that had republished the interview with Abdolrasool Dari Esfahani removed this interview from their outputs a few hours after publication. Meanwhile, Javad Karimi Qodosi, a member of the Stability Front and a conservative parliament representative, in an interview with the 'Ramz-e Obour' publication, without naming the arrested individual, published details about how this person was arrested and introduced him as being with Mohammad Javad Zarif's team during a recent trip to Turkey. According to this conservative representative, Mr. Dari Esfahani was returned to Iran from Turkey without being able to disembark from the plane. In response to this account, Bahram Qasemi, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday described Karimi Qodosi's statements as 'groundless, irrelevant, completely false, and incorrect'. According to Mr. Qasemi, 'the clear and hidden motives for making such baseless statements are completely obvious and clear.' He did not elaborate further on this matter. Abdolrasool Dari Esfahani, in an interview with the Donya-e Eghtesad newspaper in August of this year, introduced himself as a banking and financial member of the nuclear negotiation team and stated that he joined the nuclear negotiation team at the request of Valiollah Seif, the Governor of the Central Bank. He clarified in this interview that he had been a member of a team in the Presidential Office for a year and a half before the end of the negotiations, which was formed under the leadership of Mohammad Nahavandian, the Chief of Staff of Hassan Rouhani. According to Dari Esfahani, he accompanied the negotiating team in the 'final round'. Among the backgrounds mentioned by Dari Esfahani in his interview with the Donya-e Eghtesad newspaper is his activity in the Hague Court and 'effective presence' in a case regarding the collection of Iran's claims from the British government related to the purchase of Chieftain tanks, which he stated ultimately led to the payment of 400 million pounds in damages to Iran.