Rouhani Speaks w/UK PM, Discuss Debt Repayment, JCPoA

Reports from Iranian press that President Hassan Rouhani spoke to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson by phone earlier today. Kian Sharifi at BBC Monitoring tweets: "Read-out of Rouhani & Johnson's phone call today via the #Iran president's office. Standard stuff. Rouhani said the US withdrew from the JCPOA w/o talks, so there's no need for talks to rejoin it. No mention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe in this read-out. Rouhani also said the UK should repay its £400m to Iran. Very little on what Johnson said, but he apparently "emphasised the repayment of his country's debt to Iran" and said the E3 is determined to revive the nuclear deal."

• Golnar Motavelli at BBG adds "In an indirect/not-so-coded reference to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case, Rouhani told Boris Johnson that speeding up the repayment of debts to Iran will "undoubtedly" have an impact on resolving "other problems"."
• Rouhani has now spoken to the leaders of all three E3 nations (France, Germany, UK) in the past month, highlighting the desire to get the US back into the JCPoA or a similar agreement. At present no signal from US on whether it would be willing to formally rejoin the JCPoA as-is.