Page 6 - IRANRptMay21

Unemployment was expected to grow to 12.2% in 2020 from 10.7% in 2019 and rise to 12.4% in 2021, the IMF added.
2.0 Politics
2.1 Zaghari-Ratcliffe hit with extra Iran jail term on eve
of nuclear deal talks resumption
The lawyer of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on April 26 confirmed that an Iranian court has sentenced his client to a further one-year jail term and banned her from leaving the country for a year after.
The development came on the eve of the next round of Vienna talks aimed at finding a way to bring the US and Iran together to revive the 2015 nuclear deal—and though Tehran will deny it, observers will conclude that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual national detainees are being used as pawns as Iranian negotiators aim to secure a satisfactory removal of US economic sanctions as part of the resumption of the accord.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a mother of one, was found guilty of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic, the court reportedly said, as regards her conduct after a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in London in 2009. She was said to have spoken to a BBC Persian journalist at the gathering.
Her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, said an appeal was being lodged on the basis that the charges had been laid beyond the permissible time.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has already spent five years in jail, including many months in solitary confinement, on separate spying charges. She was initially arrested in April 2016 after she visited Tehran with her daughter, Gabriella, then almost two years old, to visit her parents.
Ratcliffe described his wife to the Guardian as calm but jittery.
He also revealed to the newspaper that the Foreign Office had told him last week that it had not raised a dossier on her torture and mental condition with the Iranians for fear of offending them. He reportedly said he warned the Foreign Office last September that unless it took a harder line, her release was likely to be delayed until 2023.
6 IRAN Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com