Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with his Iranian counterparts on increases in the number of arrests of (a) human rights defenders and (b) religious minorities in that country.

The UK has strongly condemned the arrest of human rights defenders and religious minorities in Iran. In the past ten months, the UK was integral to the delivery of two Iran human rights resolutions. The first, adopted by the UN Third Committee in November 2024, called on Iran to immediately and unconditionally release persons arbitrarily detained for the exercise of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including human rights defenders, journalists and all those who remain under detention for taking part in peaceful protests. The second, adopted by the Human Rights Council in April 2025, renewed the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, and renewed and expanded the mandate of the Fact-Finding Mission to investigate a wider breadth of violations, and to establish the facts, circumstances and structural causes of such violations, including discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. Our Ambassador in Iran and I continue to raise human rights directly with the Iranian Government.