The UK government paid Iran $530 million to get British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and dual national Anousheh Ashouri freed from jail.
Both left Iran on Wednesday, ending years of detention.
Iranian state media said the money was a long standing refund for the supply of 1,750 chieftain tanks paid for by the Shah before he was overthrown in 1979 in an Islamic Revolution.
The tanks were not supplied. Iran had been asking for a refund.
“Britain released $530 million…ahead of the release,” reported Iranian news agency Fars.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the Fars report.
But British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss hinted at it as said Britain was looking at ways to pay a historic debt to Iran related to the sale of battle tanks to Iran’s former ruler, the Shah.
Fars news agency said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was handed over to a British team at the International Imam Khomeini Airport.
Ashouri has also left Iran, a source close to his family told Reuters.
There was no immediate confirmation whether they were being taken directly to London.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.
Ashouri was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation said Zaghari-Ratcliffe had travelled to Iran in a personal capacity and had not been doing work in Iran.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organisation that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.
