Iran

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and I have said, on whether the IRGC is sanctioned in its completeness, we take any issue of proscribing organisations seriously. It is very much a decision for the Home Office, as the noble Lord will be aware, but we co-ordinate our activities extensively. Any decision we take in the future remains an option for us to consider, but I do not want to go further than that, nor would noble Lords expect me to.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join the general welcome for the government actions reported in the Statement and pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is reportedly mediated by China and is reflected in the meeting between their Oil Ministers yesterday on the sidelines of the OPEC conference in Vienna. Can the Minister tell me whether the Government are reconsidering UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the light of these relationships, given that arms sales totalled, in an official declaration, £7.9 billion since the bombing of Yemen started in March 2015? The Campaign Against Arms Trade estimates that the total is £23 billion.

In that context—the actions of the Iranian state that have provoked this reaction by the British Government—what impact does the Minister see on the war in Yemen and the terrible humanitarian conditions there, given that it is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises? It is also an enormous environmental threat, in the light of the sadly misnamed tanker, the “Safer”, off Sanaa. I do not know whether the Minister can update me, either now or in writing, because the latest information I could find was talk of a UN mission to pump the 1.1 million barrels of oil out of the “Safer”. At the end of May it was reported that this was about to start, but there has been no report since then. How is the behaviour of the Iranian regime, and indeed of the Saudis, likely to impact on attempts to defuse this environmental time bomb?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, yes, I acknowledge that. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, also asked about the Saudis and the new deal that was signed between the Saudis and Iran. I was in Saudi Arabia recently, in Riyadh, and met some of the key people involved in the direct negotiations with the Houthis. What I can share with the noble Baroness is that since that deal has been signed, which I asked directly of the Saudi Minister who visited on Monday, a month on, he smiled and said, “We will wait and see how stabilisation works in the region”. Thankfully, we have seen, through some of the work done directly by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a fragile peace that has been sustained in Yemen. I have had extensive meetings with various representatives of the Yemeni Government, including, this week, the Prime Minister. We have also met various leaders, including the Foreign Minister. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I met the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Mohammed bin Jaber, who is leading the direct engagement with the Houthis and the other parties within Yemen.

While the noble Baroness is correct and we stand by our strong humanitarian support for Yemen, the situation is improving and we are playing our part, directly and through the UN, to ensure that the UN-mandated process is further strengthened by the Saudis in this respect. While I hear what the noble Baroness says about support for its arms industry and our defence sales, those are carried out under a rigorous programme and practice. But it is important to recognise where there is progress. In what is a challenging situation of fragility across the Middle East and Yemen, we are seeing progress on the ground in accessibility and reconstruction, led primarily by some of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s efforts.

If I may just pick up the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about the US and the interventions, our militaries work very closely. Earlier this year, regrettably and tragically, we again saw the shipment of arms from Iran through the Gulf to supply the Houthi machine, but we were able to intercept and we have been able to share information with key Gulf partners on the interceptions that we have made and to make the case for the importance of ensuring that we can stop this arms flow from Iran.

On the FSO “Safer”—which is an Arabic word that translates in an Anglicised way—we want to make the “Safer” safer. The first step was very much about money, and that money has now been gathered. The UN, using British expertise and that of other nations, is working on ensuring that the environmental catastrophe that would happen if the tanker’s load was shed across the Gulf is being directly dealt with. A lot of work is being done in stabilising the vessel before any operations can begin. While I am not going to tempt fate and say there is good news, there has been some real progress and the first thing was about ensuring the financing was in place, which I can assure the noble Baroness is very much now in situ.