Iran

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

That does not answer the actual question. That is circumstantial evidence; it is not concrete evidence of a nuclear weapons programme. It is as straightforward as that. I challenge the hon. Gentleman who asked the question: if he could point to concrete evidence, it would be useful for the House.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend outline when in his view circumstantial evidence becomes actual evidence—is it when the bomb has dropped, for example?

[Mr Baron]

It is very straightforward. There has to be evidence of nuclear weapons. We were told, for example, that there was no shortage of circumstantial evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but it turned out that there were no WMD there. That shows how careful we need to be and how clear we need to be about the difference between circumstantial evidence and concrete evidence.

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[Mr Baron]

Yes, although I suggest an exception: keeping an option on the table that heightens tensions and makes a peaceful outcome less likely is less worthy, and we have to examine that position.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Baron]

No, I am going to make a little progress.

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[Mr McCann]

I shall make progress. The hon. Gentleman has just had the opportunity to move the motion. He should not try to come in again so swiftly.

The pacifists among us do not always recognise that their position lacks remedies in the harsh territory of international conflict and that at times it can be seen as a white flag in the face of tyranny. What is more difficult to absorb are those non-pacifists who disagree with a particular decision and then seek to stand astride the moral high ground after the event and lecture us about how they did not support the action in the first place.

Iraq is the most obvious recent controversy. I have often mused about what would have happened in March 2003 had the French and Russians put their vested interests aside and supported a united final UN resolution. Would Saddam have capitulated? We will never know. I have no issue with those who seek to post-rationalise events, but I do have an issue with those who seek to do so in a manner which neglects to mention that they did not have a feasible proposition to resolve the original problem—in the Iraq context, Saddam’s refusal to abide by the will of the international community. Now we look to Iran.

I do not support the motion; I support the amendment. In reaching that decision I have examined the actions of the Iranians thus far, and in particular the prospects for a negotiated settlement of the issues. What actions have the Iranians taken thus far? The International Atomic Energy Agency stated on 8 November 2011 that Iran had sought to design a nuclear warhead, that Iran was continuing its atomic weapons programme research, that it could have a nuclear bomb in months and that preparations to install a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile were taking place.

To this I add the Iranians’ rhetoric that the holocaust did not take place and President Ahmadinejad’s declaration that Israel should be wiped off the map; I refer to the comments of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay. If that declaration was somehow misinterpreted, were the Iranians also misinterpreted when they said that the holocaust did not take place? We must also question the Iranians’ close relationship with Syria.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

It appears that President Ahmadinejad likes to cherry-pick his arguments. Clearly, he is an anti-Semite who is intent on getting rid of the Jewish people by denying the holocaust. He also talks about getting rid of the occupation of Jerusalem, but that is just looking at the past hour’s news. Look at the years before that, when the Jews were there before the Muslims. When President Ahmadinejad makes such statements, his intent towards the Jewish people is clear.

[Mr McCann]

Absolutely. The question is the degree to which President Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite rather than whether he is an anti-Semite in the first place.

The close relationship with Syria is headline news at the moment, and there is also state sponsorship of terrorism.

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[Martin Horwood]

I wondered whether that would come up. That is the phraseology in the hon. Gentleman’s motion today, but it is not the phraseology that we used. We talked about opposing military action against Iran. That was written before—[Interruption.] No, it is not weasel words. It is about moving with events. It was written before the attack on the British embassy and before Iran, in effect, threatened the use of military force to close the straits of Hormuz. It would have been better to say clearly that we opposed preventive military action against Iran. That is why I do not support the motion, which rules out the use of force, apparently in any circumstances. We have minesweepers in the Gulf: if those came under attack, would we really rule out the use of force?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Is not the real point about the Liberal Democrat manifesto that one simply cannot rule anything in or rule anything out in what is always a moveable feast?

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), and I endorse entirely what he said about the importance of the BBC World Service. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), a fellow member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, on initiating the debate, but I will not support him in the Lobby. I will support the well drafted and measured wording of the amendment, not because I believe that we should be engaged in military action against Iran, but because I want to stop military action against Iran and a war that would be a precursor to a conflagration in the region.

I am concerned about the potential consequences of the current crisis. I recently held discussions with a senior figure in the Pakistani Government, who said that the consequences for Afghanistan and Pakistan of a conflict involving Iran would be dire. Anybody who has been, as I have, to Herat, the Afghan city close to Iran, and seen how calm and peaceful the area is will recognise that it is no accident; it is because that border between Afghanistan and Iran is stable and calm, and that would not necessarily be the case if there were a conflict involving Iran.

Similarly, Iran’s borders are very complicated. Reference has already been made to some Gulf states, including Bahrain, but other neighbours such as Qatar and Kuwait are in range of Iranian missiles, and the Iranians would not even need to send missiles; they could send people with bombs in bags or in suitcases.

Reference has been made also to Iraq.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

rose—

[Mike Gapes]

I will give way in a moment.

With the Defence Committee several years ago, I visited the KBOT terminal at the top of the gulf of Hormuz, just south of Basra, from where, along with the ABOT terminal, most of the Iraqi oil from Basra leaves. That was a few weeks after motor launches from Iran had set off bombs underneath the terminal to try to destroy it. The area is now much more strongly protected, but the potential for a conflagration involving Iran, leading not necessarily to a blockage of the strait of Hormuz, but at least to attacks on facilities, urban centres or bases in the area, is great. We as an international community therefore need to be careful and measured and to send out clear signals, whether in relation to mad speeches by Newt Gingrich or to the Israeli Government, that the use of language referring to military action is not necessarily the best solution to the crisis.

I can understand why politicians in Israel are worried. I would be worried if not just the President of a country but a succession of its leaders had said that they wanted to wipe out my state, which they regarded as a cancer, but we need also to point out, as senior figures in Israel have, that military action by Israel will not be in its own long-term interests regarding its relations with the Arab world.

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[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I welcome and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). I am glad that we have had the chance to have this incredibly important debate. If I had been asked about this subject 12 months ago, I would have spoken out in favour of the motion that my hon. Friend has tabled. That was my original position, and it stems from a simple fact: I want us, as politicians, to do everything we possibly can in this place to try to ensure that we do not kill innocent people. All politicians need to start from that position.

When we talk about a campaign in Iran, we wonder what we would actually do. Would we drop bombs from 36,000 feet in built-up areas? Would we put troops on the ground? The Iran-Iraq war led to a million deaths, but only one mile was covered in eight years, and that was with the full backing of a landlocked country with western support. We wonder what we would do, but we have to look at the bigger picture. I believe that my sentiments back then were naive, to use the word the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) used. It was a naive position for me to take, because a country does not actually need to use a nuclear weapon to have a devastating effect on the region if it so wishes. The Iranians would like to believe that they have a right to some of the United Arab Emirates. They could walk into those islands and occupy them through the use of totally conventional forces, but what can we do about it if there is the threat of a nuclear weapon in the background? What will we do if they are at that stage with a nuclear weapon? What suffering will be meted out to the people in those states?

Much has been said tonight about a proxy war, which I believe could only be ratcheted up if Iran had a nuclear weapons capability. I fear that organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas would be empowered by the fact and would be bolder in their terrorist activities and the steps they take against the state of Israel simply because they would know that they had such a powerful ally behind them. What will be planted out on those organisations if a nuclear weapon lies behind them?

I was elected in 2010, but I remember clearly watching the debates in this House on the Iraq war a long time before the war began. I remember listening to Tony Benn, who stood on this side of the House and said that war with 24-hour news coverage is too sensationalist and that too many people out there would revel in the fact that bombs would be falling on Baghdad. I think that we have a problem with the 24-hour news cycle, because it is almost as if it wants military action because it makes such great television pictures. It appeals to people and entertains them, but the reality is far more harsh.

Equally, I remember the speech my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) made when the House debated the Libya campaign. He graphically described the reality of war and the photographs, brought back to him by colleagues he had served with in the armed forces, of burned and dismembered bodies. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) described how one of his constituents took his own life as a result of the mental trauma he had suffered in Afghanistan. It is never an easy decision to talk about military action. I have said in the House before that war is the failure of politicians—of people like us, in the safety of this House, in this country—to work within an organisation, but does that mean that we should hamstring ourselves at the start and say, “No matter what you do, there will be no military action”?

Military action could simply be provoked in the strait of Hormuz. If that waterway were closed, if British or any shipping were attacked, we would have no choice but to react. We have minesweepers and other ships in the area. If we pass the motion today and say that we will take no military action, we will send out an even worse signal to the world, but, even though I shall support the amendment in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), it does not mean that I do not sympathise with the motion that my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay has tabled.

This has been an intelligent, heartfelt and engaging debate, and the one message from every speaker, whether they have been for the amendment or for the original motion, has been, “We want to avoid military action,” but I am slightly concerned that at times the debate has appeared to be about military action tomorrow. Military action tomorrow is simply not on the agenda, and if next week the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister came to the House and said, “We are going with the Americans to attack Iran because we can’t go any further,” I do not think that the House would be supportive. I do not think that at this stage of events the mood of the House would be to support such military intervention.

I return to the point, however, that that is not what we have been discussing today. We have been discussing whether we remove the option completely from the table, and I do not believe that we can. We need to work hard diplomatically and with countries such as Russia and China. We must have far better diplomatic negotiations with Russia to try to push Iran away from nuclear proliferation and ensure that it focuses on energy needs, because I am quite sure that the Russians do not want a nuclear-armed Iran and, then perhaps, an escalation in the middle east, just as much as everybody else does not, but unfortunately they are not prepared, for other reasons, to support the United Nations and the west in those areas.

I have absolute faith in this Foreign Secretary; I really do. This Foreign Secretary and this Foreign Office have moved the Department to a new standing in the world, something that had declined in recent years, and the Foreign Office and the people in it are well respected. As the Foreign Secretary said in his speech today, an entire section of the Foreign Office is engaged purely in negotiations with Iran and in diplomacy in the area, and that is to be applauded. I imagine that that is where all Members want the situation to move to, but much as none of us actually wants to use the military option, it does not mean that we can take it off the table.