Iran: Stability in the Middle East

Lord Clarke of Hampstead Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clarke of Hampstead (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom. I join all those who have thanked my noble friend Lord Turnberg for securing this timely and important debate. I say “timely” because of what we have read in the papers about what has been going on in that troubled country.

One reason I put my name down for this debate is that I want to hear the Minister’s reply to some of the questions posed so far—there will probably be more after. In the last 30-odd years, I and others in this Chamber have been pressing the Government to take a more realistic view of the inhumane and wicked regime that keeps the people of Iran under such oppression. Many years ago the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, told the world that Iran was the greatest exporter of terrorism; through all the years since, those wicked mullahs have carried on bringing instability to the region. Their policies, internal and external, have been cruel and deceitful.

Within Iran, the oppression continues and the recent protests have led to an all-too- familiar pattern of murders and mass arrests. Innocent people who have only freedom in mind—freedom for democracy—are being cruelly mown down. Once again, the protests were put down by the Revolutionary Guard and others. I pay tribute to those people who made such a stand to try to change things in their own country.

Externally, we see the Revolutionary Guard getting its fingers into various other pies in the region. Other speakers have mentioned the countries where it is working; the external influence of the IRG and the mullahs is quite extensive. We have to recognise that and remember their history. Before we had the recent nuclear proliferation deal, deserted by the Americans, some of us remember the quartet plus one. After those talks finished, people thought they were a success. But President Rouhani went on record to say how he had duped and deceitfully misled us and other countries in those talks. We have to learn from the mistakes. This is the Rouhani from the 1988 massacre; the Rouhani who told Iraq what to do about the people at Ashraf and Camp Liberty. More recently, Iran’s fingers have got involved in Albania, where some of those people resettled after getting out of Camp Liberty. I hope that the Minister is able to speak with a louder voice than we have heard from the Government in recent years.