Boris Johnson Mocks Iran-Backed TV Channel on Same Day as Dad’s Appearance

(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson disparaged an Iranian state-funded TV channel, the very same day his father appeared on it saying the country “means so much” to Britain’s new prime minister.

Johnson mocked opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons on Thursday for having been “paid by Press TV,” an international English-language channel that is a division of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the only legal broadcaster in Iran.

Hours earlier, Press TV released a video interview with Johnson’s father Stanley, who said he looks forward to his son “building bridges with Iran.”

“Iran means so much to him,” Stanley Johnson said. “Boris is a man who has this great sense of history - Iran to him will mean Darius, Xerxes,” referring to the ancient Persian kings.

A diplomatic crisis with Iran is one of Johnson’s top foreign policy challenges, following weeks of escalating tensions in which Britain seized an Iranian oil tanker and Iran retaliated by boarding and impounding a British-flagged ship as it sailed through the Strait of Hormuz. British oil tankers have since fled the Persian Gulf, the world’s most prolific oil region to U.K. carriers.

Asked how his son would resolve the situation, Stanley Johnson said Britain and Iran should give each other their ships back. “Easy peasy,” he told Press TV.

There’s also the question of the fate of U.K.-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who’s been held by Iran on spying charges since 2016. Stanley Johnson didn’t address that.

--With assistance from Ladane Nasseri.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Caroline Alexander, Andrew Atkinson

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