'I believe in Iran’s desire for better ties with the West,' says Philip Hammond after Tehran trip

Iran's leaders genuinely want to "turn a page" and rebuild ties with the West, Philip Hammond said on Monday, after a landmark meeting with President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran.

The Foreign Secretary hailed a “change” in Iran's view of Britain and also spoke of a “new phase” in diplomacy towards Syria, as he ended his ground-breaking two-day visit to the Islamic Republic.

Mr Rouhani “welcomed” the reopening of the British Embassy after yesterday's meeting, the first bilateral encounter between a British foreign secretary and an Iranian president for almost 14 years. Given that a pro-regime mob had looted that Embassy in 2011 – and no official speech in Iran is complete without bitter condemnation of Britain or America - Mr Hammond’s visit carried an element of risk.

But Mr Hammond encountered no hostile demonstrations in Tehran; instead every official told him that last month’s nuclear agreement provided an opportunity to drain the poison from Iran’s relations with the West.

Mr Rouhani had given a “very strong signal of a desire for dialogue, of better understanding of each other’s positions,” said Mr Hammond.

Iran’s longstanding hostility towards Britain had softened, argued Mr Hammond. “I also detect a change in the approach, the language and the rhetoric around the UK,” he said. Instead of indulging in stereotypes about “imperial Britain” with its legacy of involvement in Iran, Mr Hammond said that officials had treated him as a representative of a European country with whom it made sense to engage.

Yet Britain and Iran remain at loggerheads over most of the crises in the Middle East. In Syria, London wants Bashar al-Assad to go; Tehran is doing everything to help him stay.

As for whether Iran would actually change its regional policies, Mr Hammond was notably cautious. He stressed that Britain still had “fundamental” differences with Iran, but said that diplomacy towards Syria had entered a “new phase” because of Iran’s involvement.

“Up to now, we’ve been having a discussion amongst ourselves in the West, quite literally without the two most important and influential players in Syria – Iran and Russia – being in the room. That may be very gratifying to us, but it’s not going to get us to a solution,” he said.

“We’ve got the opportunity for Iran as well to be engaged in that discussion with us and that makes it a more realistic discussion. So yes, I think there is a new phase.”

Mr Hammond cautioned that it was “difficult to say what degree of flexibility Iran will display”, but argued that Mr Rouhani’s decision to improve relations with Britain was, in itself, evidence that Iran could be flexible. “It’s hard to see what is the point of advocating dialogue with someone who you know has a very different view of the world from you, unless you are anticipating some give and take,” he said.

His own view of Iran was changed by his visit. “I suspect that I, like many people in Britain and the West, will have had an image of Iran as a desperately theocratic, deeply religious society motivated by ideology,” said Mr Hammond. “What I’ve seen is a perfectly normal, bustling, dynamic, entrepreneurial, thrusting, middle income developing world city, which has clearly enormous potential. You only need to look at it to see the enormous potential.”

Mr Hammond added that Iran was less authoritarian than he had believed. “I don’t get the impression of a population cowed by authority,” he said. “It’s a much more bustling, dynamic place than I had expected – a much more diverse place than I had expected – and the message I’m getting from our interlocutors is that they do want to see the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions as an opportunity to turn a page. That doesn't mean we can wipe out history - and in particular some very difficult history between Britain and Iran. But it does mean we can agree to draw a line and move on.”