Iran

Debate between Alistair Burt and Matt Warman

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend makes a serious point. I can assure him that the United Kingdom is not considering this matter purely through the eyes of the President, although his statement is of course definitive as a Government position. As I said when I began my remarks, I was able to comment on a discussion that I was part of between Secretary of State Tillerson and Foreign Minister Zarif, in which they gave their view of why they were at odds with each other.

The Secretary of State enunciated very well the sort of concerns that are held by a number of Members of the House of Congress and other people in America and in other states. There is no doubt that the concerns expressed by the President are held by others. However, the point is how to use those doubts and whether those doubts were sufficient to put at risk the JCPOA. It is the United Kingdom’s view that they were not and that those other issues, important as they are, should be handled in a different way, but that the JCPOA should stay in place. We will endeavour to work with our allies in relation to that point of view.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Much as many might wish it to, what the JCPOA proscribes is very tight and does not cover things such as ballistic missiles or human rights. Will the Minister outline why such tight proscription is in fact in our interest and Iran’s? The wider we range on issues such as this, the harder it will be to strike any deal.

[Alistair Burt]

I said earlier that Foreign Minister Zarif has made it clear to the other parties of the agreement that, had the agreement sought to go wider after the years of fairly torturous negotiations on the nucleophile, it simply would not have been signed. If it had not been signed, Iran would have been continuing to proceed on a path that we all felt might lead to the possibility of a nuclear weapon in the region, with all those implications. It was better to have that agreement signed on those terms and to continue work on the other things than it would have been simply to try to find such an all-embracing deal that it would never have been signed by Iran.

Let me spell out to the House the product of the deal. Iran has shipped more than 12 tonnes of enriched uranium to Russia to eliminate its stock of 20% enriched uranium; removed more than 13,000 centrifuges and associated infrastructure; removed the core of the Arak heavy water reactor; removed all excess heavy water to the Arak reactor to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium; allowed greater IAEA access and the use of online monitoring; provisionally implemented the IAEA additional protocol; and agreed a procurement channel for authorised exports of nuclear-rated goods and services to Iran. All that was achieved by the deal. We would hold that—notwithstanding the extraneous matters, which are important and need to be dealt with —the product of the deal, as I have enunciated, has been good for the region, the world and the United Kingdom.