Britain is to reopen its embassy in Tehran, four years after it closed.Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond will visit Iran at the weekend with a delegation of business leaders, a senior government source said.
The embassy was closed in 2011 after it was stormed by Iranian protesters during a demonstration against sanctions imposed by Britain.
The visit comes weeks after Tehran reached a deal with six world powers aimed at curbing its nuclear programme.
The reopening of the embassy was first publicly proposed by William Hague in June last year, but it has been held up by technical problems.
Iran’s reluctance to relax import laws has slowed the replacement of communications and other equipment taken out when the post was abandoned.
Analysis
Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent
The reopening of Britain’s embassy in Tehran will consolidate the normalisation of relations after a very bumpy period.
Britain was deeply aggrieved at the storming and ransacking of its embassy compound in November 2011, clearly feeling that the Iranian authorities should have protected the building.
While relations were not broken off, they were reduced to the lowest level possible. Ties have slowly been warming but it is clearly the successful conclusion of the nuclear accord with Iran that has paved the way for the embassy reopening.
A number of other European countries have already sent ministers and trade delegations hotfoot to Tehran in the wake of the nuclear deal. Britain has to an extent lagged behind.
The hope though is that better diplomatic ties and stronger economic links might help to bolster more reform-minded elements in the Iranian leadership and open up Iranian society to new pressures for change.
The BBC’s Kim Ghattas recently spent a week in Iran – the longest period a BBC correspondent has been granted permission to report there since 2009 – and interviewed the Vice-President Masumeh Ebtekar about the country’s thawing relations with the West.
Ms Ebtekar said that Iran wanted to co-operate with neighbouring states to promote peace in the Middle East, and that while Iran had a right to defend itself it had no intention of dominating the region.
Source: BBC NEWS