Iran: Nuclear Deal

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, as I mentioned earlier, there are still obstacles in the way of reopening the embassy but we are working very hard on them in discussions with Iran and we hope to reopen it by the end of the year. The noble Lord is right that that will help businesses from around the world, particularly the UK, to operate there. However, businesses are right to be circumspect about how soon they go in and the circumstances under which they can operate. I am sure there will be lot of caution. I think I have already made it clear that we are talking to countries in the area through our posts and also sometimes through ministerial contacts with regard to the implications of this agreement. Clearly, our diplomatic work since last summer with regard to Yemen has been trying to ensure that there is no spillover into what appears at times to be a proxy war.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, while we have no illusions about the continuous malign influence of certain Iranian groups in the Middle East, should we not recognise that if things were to go the other way or this deal were to be blocked, that would probably trigger the opening of a major nuclear arms race in the region? As it is, if this deal holds, can we not look in the other direction and begin to think about a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone, which has long been the ambition of many? I urge my noble friend to encourage her colleagues to make that a priority for the future despite the obvious difficulties.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

As always, I listen very carefully to my noble friend. He has great wisdom in this area. I agree with him with regard to the importance of ensuring that an arms race is not started and that blocking this deal could have achieved exactly that. With regard to the Middle East weapons-free zone, I had discussions about this when I was at RevCon in New York a couple of months ago—and I am grateful again to the Opposition for ensuring that I was able to go with their support during that period of purdah. I am afraid that progress was rather disrupted because of Egypt seeking to make it impossible for Israel to take part in those discussions—at least it appeared to try to make that impossible—by saying that if Israel did not turn up on specified dates the whole thing would go ahead without it. There is a lot of difficulty internationally in taking forward the idea of a Middle East weapons-free zone but I agree with my noble friend that we should try to do so.