Iran: Demonstrations

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this important debate to our attention and for highlighting the terrible catalogue of inhuman activities by the regime. If we are to have any influence at all on the obscene activities of the Iranian regime, now is the time for us to act. The UK will have a major impact if it goes ahead now and proscribes the brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at a time when those brave women, and men, are taking to the streets in one of the biggest demonstrations the regime has ever faced. Of course, our Government have rightly been quick to sanction the so-called morality police—what a misnomer; they would be better named the mortality police—but that is not enough.

It is the revolutionary guard, that draconian instrument of the regime, that callously murdered Mahsa Amini in custody for simply casting off her hijab. It is now murderously persecuting those hordes of protesting Iranians who have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers. It represses the population without mercy and kills women and children with impunity, as we have heard. Of course, this latest outrage simply broke the dam of pent-up rage, after years of persecution of any Iranian who dared to challenge the regime. Examples of death by public hanging of so many, often very young, are so common that they are scarcely commented upon in the western media.

That the people of Iran are suffering terribly is no secret, yet we in Europe and America have until recently been willing to turn a blind eye to this unconscionable behaviour to try to do a deal through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in the vain hope that this would curtail Iran’s plan to gain nuclear weapons. It seems to have mattered little that Iran has cynically violated any possible agreement, continuing along the path to a bomb completely undeterred by these never-ending discussions, now mainly defunct. The west’s conditions in the JCPOA say nothing about the treatment of Iran’s own citizens, nor the revolutionary guard’s activities outside Iran; about its sponsorship of terrorism abroad; about its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it is completely destabilising that country, and in Gaza, where Hamas is preventing any form of stability. And here in the UK, it is spreading its venomous extremist messages wherever it can.

There are many examples of its influence, from the attempted kidnapping of the Iranian women’s activist Masih Alinejad in New York to the IRGC-inspired extremism which led to the attack on Salman Rushdie. That Iran’s regime is a danger to the world and its own citizens is beyond dispute, to say nothing of its obvious repeated intentions to wipe Israel off the map. That is always there, but it is perhaps for another debate.

Now is the time for our new Conservative leadership to show some resolve. Proscribe the horrific Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and withdraw completely from the fruitless and moribund JCPOA discussions, or strengthen them by including reference to the IRGC’s terrorist activities at home and abroad. It may not be possible for us to be directly involved in regime change, but we can at least support those brave Iranian citizens who are desperate to do so.