Situation in the Red Sea

Bob Seely Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Grant Shapps)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the situation in the Red Sea.

Last week at Lancaster House, I set out why we are living in a far more dangerous world. Members will need no reminding that we are dealing with multiple conflicts at once: Russia has increased the intensity of its attacks on Ukraine; the appalling Hamas atrocities of 7 October have brought conflict to that region; and, most recently of all, international shipping is now being threatened by Houthi proxies aided and abetted by Iran.

Since November, there have been more than 40 attacks on commercial vessels across the region. It is salutary to think that it has been 30 years since the maritime law was codified in the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. Some 168 nations back the UNCLOS treaty. The UK signed it, Yemen acceded to it, and even Iran is a signatory to it. There is a good reason why it has achieved such broad support. All nations rely on global trade, and none more so than the UK, given that a full 90% of UK commerce comes to us by sea.

Some 12% of international trade passes through the Red sea every single year, amounting to more than $1 trillion-worth of goods. In addition, 8% of global grain trade, 12 % of seaborne traded oil and 8% of the world’s liquefied natural gas all pass through this ancient seaway. Perhaps even more astonishing is that 40% of the goods that are traded between Europe and Asia go through the Red sea.

Sadly, the Houthis’ unlawful and callous attacks are putting all that trade at risk. Twelve international companies have been forced to suspend the passage through the Red sea because of the attacks. The number of vessels transiting Bab al-Mandab was 54% below the level observed in the previous year, and diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope has had a crippling impact, not only adding days of delay to vital deliveries but driving up international shipping costs to prohibitive levels. Some reports suggest that shipping costs are up by 300%.

What these Iran-backed Houthi pirate thugs forget is that it is the least well-off nations and people who suffer the most from their illegal actions, starting with Yemen itself, where almost all food comes by sea. At times like these, nations must stand up. Attacks on Red sea shipping automatically make this a global problem.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his recent speech. According to the House of Commons Library, there are 12 Iranian proxy forces in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Yemen, so this is not just about the Houthis, although that is what we are dealing with now. To what extent are we able to keep tabs on and monitor, or to work with allies who can keep tabs on and monitor, those dozen proxy forces that, sadly, Iran is now using with increased repetitiveness to attack not only our interests but the interests of our allies?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; he is something of an expert in this area. Iran is absolutely behind all the different proxy groups that he outlined, and many more. In a way, Iran is able to control this situation without getting too involved itself, and the world needs to wake up and recognise that. We are of course monitoring all of that incredibly closely. Appeasing the Houthis now, or all these other groups, will not lead to a more stable tomorrow, in the case of the Houthis, in respect of the Red sea. Being blind to the sponsors of terror will not benefit the international order in the long run, which is why it is so important that the world has acted.

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[John Healey]

What do I think? Well, it would be helpful to have access to the sort of classified information that the Defence Secretary has in order to make these decisions. It is his responsibility to do so, and it is our responsibility in this House to challenge and hold him to account when he makes those decisions—and, of course, if he fails to make decisions.

Perhaps I might return to the Red sea and the theme and focus of this debate. We now have around 2,500 military personnel in the middle east, and I begin by recognising their special service. Many were deployed at short notice—most were away from their families over Christmas—helping to supply essential aid for Palestinians in Gaza, working to reinforce regional security and reduce the risk of wider escalation, and, in cases such as those of the crew of HMS Diamond and the pilots of the Typhoons and air tankers, operating under great pressure and threat. They undertake their tasks with total professionalism. We thank them and are proud of them.

[Bob Seely]

At this juncture, I think it worth pointing out—the Secretary of State may want to refer to this—that Iranian proxies are regularly rocketing, or attempting to rocket, US bases in Iraq, some of which have a UK presence. It is only through good luck, and complex air defence, if I understand correctly, that there have not been considerable US casualties or potential UK casualties. That is a point that we need to bear in mind when we talk not only about Iranian proxies but about UK forces in the middle east.

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[James Gray]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Incidentally, I forgot to mention that I very much welcome him to the Front Bench. He is doing a good job standing in for the Foreign Secretary. I hope he will take note of the Procedure Committee’s report this afternoon on how a Secretary of State who is in the House of Lords should or should not be questioned by this House, and that the Government will accept the Procedure Committee’s proposal, namely that the Foreign Secretary should be called to the Bar of the House to take questions.

[Bob Seely]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[James Gray]

We must not get too far off the subject, but of course.

[Bob Seely]

I think I support what my hon. Friend says. Of the two times we voted on military action, the first time we were misled and the second time we were stung by having been misled, so we went the wrong way. As someone who was quite close to the Libyan conflict, as I saw it play out with ISIS in northern Iraq, I think we should have taken military action in principle over the use of chemical weapons. By not doing so, regardless of the outcome of the Syrian war, we weakened the idea of western resolve. I know it can be a bit of a cliché, but if we have a red line and dictators ignore it, we end up in a world of pain.

[James Gray]

Both my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) are seeking to involve me in a debate about a matter that happened some 10 or 15 years ago and is well beyond the scope of the debate. My point is not about whether or not striking against Syria was right, wrong or indifferent, but about the fact that we in this House chose not to do so. The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), was absolutely right to say that not doing something is often as bad as doing something.

We in this House had a shortage of information—my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) knows a lot about these things, and I am ready to admit that I do not—of briefings, of secret intelligence and of legal advice, but we chose to take that decision. It seems to me that, in the extremely dangerous world that we live in, we will see an awful lot of these decisions taken in the months and years to come. The way in which matters were handled this time shows that the pendulum, which had swung from the divine right of Kings in the middle ages, whereby the King decided on his own, to the time in 2003 and 2013 when we allowed this House to vote, albeit not necessarily sensibly, has swung back to precisely where it ought to be—namely, that if this House votes on something, it is, by that means, diminished. We cannot then hold the Government to account; we cannot come back and say, “You, Mr Government, have got that wrong,” because we voted for it. And if we had voted for it, the Secretary of State would surely say, “But you voted for it!”

Our whole purpose in this House and this Chamber is to scrutinise what the Government have done, hold them to account and, if necessary, remove them when they do the wrong thing.

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[Sir Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

I begin by paying tribute to all of our armed forces personnel who have been involved in action in the Red sea. They always rise to any challenge asked of them with professionalism and courage, and are a great example of the fact that our armed forces are so much more than the hardware we invest in.

I accept the point that the Secretary of State for Defence made at the outset of the debate—there is no direct link between the conflict in Gaza and the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red sea—but we would be wrong not to accept that there is interconnectivity between the tensions in different parts of the middle east today, and we need to understand the context of those tensions.

Back in 2020, the Trump Administration brokered the Abraham accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and then Morocco. It was a great exercise in leadership to bring reconciliation to a part of the world that had seen too much conflict for too long. It has resulted in a big improvement: both economically, in terms of business and trade between the countries involved, and in people-to-people relationships. For example, around half a million Israelis visited Dubai in the past few years, something that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

However, there was always one country that did not want the Abraham accords to succeed: Iran. It did not want those accords to succeed because it did not believe in a two-state solution, because it did not believe that Israel should exist. Ayatollah Khamenei has been tremendously consistent in his views about the purity of the Islamic revolution, his detestation of the west, and his contempt for the existence of the state of Israel. Anyone who is interested should read the book “Reading Khamenei” by Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Iran was never going to want to see peace between the Arab states and Israel, because that threatened Iran’s hegemony—as it saw it—over the Islamic parts of the middle east.

The big question was always: what would Saudi Arabia do? It is a major player in the security of both the Red sea and the Gulf. When I saw the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia on Fox News saying that every day he believed Saudi Arabia was closer to peace and reconciliation with Israel, my first reaction was that Iran would react against it, whether through its proxies: Hamas in Gaza, funded and armed by Iran; Hezbollah in Lebanon, funded and armed by Iran; or the Houthis in Yemen, funded and armed by Iran. In fact, it turns out that we now see all three being active, and we need to understand that that “axis of resistance” against the west, as Iran calls it, is something it will keep going as long as it possibly can. It will not seek peace; it will resist peace at all times.

In the Red sea, we are absolutely right to say—as many Members have done, and I do not want to go over that territory again—that the Houthi threat is a specific one that we must deal with. Some 95% of UK exports and imports go by sea, and in the whole global trading environment, 15% of all global trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab strait. As many Members have said, not to act would leave international maritime law in tatters, and having no deterrence there whatsoever would risk a bout of global inflation. We saw what the disruption from the conflict in Ukraine could do, and the same would be true were there to be permanent disruption in the Red sea. We would have disruption of vital supply chains, including food and the medicines that so many people depend on. So we were right to take action.

However, we need to come back to understanding the role of Iran in this and other processes. We have seen Iran develop drones that are sent to Russia by Iran Air to oppress the people of Ukraine, yet Iran Air still flies out of Heathrow airport in the United Kingdom. Why is it tolerated? We have seen the money moved around the global financial system by Iran to fund its proxies, but we still have two Iranian banks trading in the City of London within a stone’s throw of the Bank of England. Why is that happening? As the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), said, we have videos of antisemitic speeches by IRGC generals being investigated by the Charity Commission. The regulator is looking at footage of “Death to Israel” chants on an Islamic charity’s UK premises. Two of the videos show talks by IRGC leaders about an apocalyptic war on the Jews. Again as my hon. Friend said, the IRGC actually took responsibility this week for a military attack on a foreign territory, which is something they have not had the audacity to do before.

So I ask again: why is the IRGC not a proscribed organisation in this country? It is clearly involved in a wide range of activity that is dangerous to Britain’s national interests and our security. I have never once, when I have raised this issue in the House, been given a clear answer from those on the Front Branch about why we will not ban Iran Air, why we will not stop Iranian banks in the City and why we will not proscribe the IRGC. I live in a little bit of extra hope that we may get an answer tonight.

[Bob Seely]

The answer that the Government have so far given on the IRGC is that it is an arm of the state, and it is very difficult to proscribe an arm of the state. I am not saying I agree with that answer, but that is the answer given. Is there a way around it?

[Sir Liam Fox]

It is an answer, but it is not a very convincing one. I hope we will get a better answer from the Minister of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who I know is well capable of giving us answers in greater detail than that.

We face a choice in the Red sea and beyond: we are either going to deal with the political problems we face or, rather than the rosy future that the Abraham accords offered, we can go back to 1971, with a radicalised generation in the middle east and return to all the problems of hijacks, Munich and all the things we thought we had left behind us.

We need to drive a solution. As the Prime Minister said earlier this week, there must be a commitment to a two-state solution, and it is not acceptable for anyone to put a political block on that. We need security guarantees to be given for Israel and the Israeli people, who have a right to live in peace, and for any future Palestinian state. That will require an international peace agreement. It will require the United States, Saudi Arabia and others all to be willing to commit to that peace. It will require a new way of looking at politics in the region, and it is right that Hamas cannot be part of that if there is to be any way forward, and there will need to be massive economic reconstruction in the area.

In conclusion, let me say what I have said before in the House: when we look at the whole region, we see that peace is not just the absence of war or conflict, but the freedom from the fear of conflict, oppression or terror. It comes with concepts of rights that have to apply to all people—not just rights and dignity, but enforceable rights and dignity. Only when all the people of the middle east and the wider region have access to all those things will we have any chance of achieving the peace that is not just part of their security, but part of our security.

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[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will try to wind up after seven minutes. I am mindful that lots of others want to get in. Lots of good speeches today; I just want to start by referring to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I completely agree with what she is saying about a two-state solution. Those friends of Israel who give Netanyahu and the Israeli right an easy ride on this are no friends of Israel, as far as I can see, because all they are doing is making Israel’s long-term future significantly more precarious. Israel’s existence is accepted and guaranteed when there is peace with the Palestinians, and until there is peace with Palestinians, Israel is always going to be under threat of some kind.

Where I differ from the hon. Lady is on her optimism. I would have agreed with her in the 1990s, but there has been so much more awful water under the bridge since then. On Palestinian statehood, I cannot see a good reason not to do it now, but if we had Palestinian statehood now and Hamas immediately took over that Palestinian statehood in the west bank, it would simply undermine the cause of Palestinian statehood. There is a significant problem there and, as the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Sir Liam Fox) rightly pointed out, Iran is behind so much of this.

I want to make a few points in the brief time I have. I want to make reference to the excellent speech made my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and also the speech of the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). There appears to be a growing, significant, provable link between the use of proxy warfare and non-state actors, often used by other states, and the rise in conflict-related sexual violence, which in some parts of the world and some conflicts is now endemic. We saw that with ISIS, which is a non-state actor, and arguably nobody’s proxy, in the use of Yazidi women effectively as the spoils of war until they were raped to death. We have seen it with the abuse of Israeli women by Hamas, but Hamas are also increasingly intolerant in their Islamist attitude towards women in their own society. We have also seen it with the Houthis, with Wagner in Ukraine and with Russian troops. It occasionally involves state troops, as well as non-state actors and proxies, and there is an increasing casualness with which sexual violence is used in conflict, which I think should disturb us all.

The world is moving to a more dangerous place; that is quite clear. It has been becoming more dangerous since 2010. Putin declared his new cold war in his Munich speech in 2007, but we did not want to notice. Unfortunately, everything since then has progressed quite logically from Putin’s point of view, although we have still feigned surprise. I do not know why we do that. Since 2015 we have had a growing China problem with an increasingly intolerant regime under President Xi. There is a battle for humanity under way in the 21st century between open societies and closed societies and between societies where AI and big data will hopefully be used to improve the quality of human life and places such as Iran, China and Russia where AI and big data will increasingly be used to control people and societies and, effectively, in an Orwellian state, to prevent people from rebelling because it will be possible to use algorithms to identify when they are about to rebel or fight back and do something about it. That is the bigger picture that we are dealing with.

It is particularly concerning at the moment that in several areas of the world we have conflicts between united axis powers, if I can call them that. Out of three potential conflicts that are under way at the moment or about to be, Ukraine and Russia is a hot war where the Russians believe that we are directly involved although we believe that we are indirectly involved. That war is fought with cyber, disinformation, espionage and poisoning, and some of that has been happening in the UK. We also have the expansion of China, with it trying to take territory in the South China sea and presenting an increasing threat to Taiwan. Xi has told his army to be ready to take Taiwan within the next three years, if I remember correctly.

In the middle east, Russia’s ally Iran is behind much of what is happening, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset so eloquently said. Iran now has 22 proxies. In Bahrain it has two or three and in Iraq it has at least six, some of which are rocketing UK and US forces. Where else? In Lebanon it has Hezbollah, which is potentially its most powerful proxy. It is strongly aligned to the regime in Syria. That is not a proxy but the regime has been heavily dependent on Iran to fight its wars. Throughout the middle east, the Iranians have built up a web that is a significant threat to us.

We have had conventional wars that we prepared for and fought for, or that we prepared our armed forces to fight and hopefully win, and we have this very black-and-white notion that we are either at peace or we are at war, yet the nature of war is changing. We are living in a world in which we are effectively in a perpetual state of conflict with some nations. Russia sees itself in perpetual conflict with us. There will be periods of hot war and periods of cold war, and we must be prepared as never before. Likewise, we are effectively waging an indirect war against a series of Iranian proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and whoever was rocketing us this week in Iraq. China’s power is more economic, but it is using “little blue men” to seize territory in the South China sea—that is in contrast to the “little green men” the Russians used in Crimea. In these key areas of the pre-global war phase, we are beginning to see a form of total war being waged by our adversaries in Ukraine, the middle east and the South China sea.

The Foreign Affairs Committee recently heard some interesting evidence on how Iran is, in many ways, both more unstable and more powerful than at any other time. It has 22 proxies, and it has the material to build and prepare a nuclear weapon within a week. Iran is at a potentially frightening stage but, at the same time, we know it is very unstable and we know that its young people, especially its young women, are hostile to the regime, as never before. Many people in Iran wish ill of the regime, so we are dealing with an Iran that is more aggressively adventurous in its foreign policy, potentially because of its weakness at home.

We have arguably not had enough deterrence, and we need more. Various Members have talked about that in greater deal than I have time to go into now.

All these things—the growing number of black swan moments and the growing instability in the world—are an argument for having a greater sense of strategy. Many people talk about strategy, and there are so many think-tanks in the UK dedicated to strategy. It would be wonderful to see politicians from both sides of the House engaging more in strategic thinking. One of my suggestions for global Britain is that, as well as having a National Security Council to deal with current problems, we should have a national strategy council that is always looking five, 10 or 20 years ahead to identify problems as they come.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I fully agree with the last point made by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). We need those structures.

Before you came into the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, we discussed the nature of this debate and whether we should have a vote. We are taking military action in a region that has been described as a tinderbox by virtually every Member who has spoken. There are just over 20 Members present, and I say this with respect and affection, but most of them are the House’s defence nerds. The reason we do not have more Members present is that this is a discussion, not a debate. There is no decision to be made at the end and, as a result, I do not think the House is taking its responsibilities seriously. I think we are on the edge of real danger in this region, and it could spill over and affect the lives of our constituents. If we are to take military action, I want to take some responsibility as a Member of this House. I want to be able to go back to my constituents and explain how I have exercised that responsibility, which is why I believe we should have a vote.

I was in the Chamber one afternoon when, with even fewer Members present than now, John Reid reported that we were sending troops to Afghanistan. He gave the impression that not a shot would be fired in anger. There was hardly any debate and very little reporting back, but we lost 400 British troops in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of others, and the war went on for more than a decade.

I was also here for the vote on Iraq—we did have a vote then. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) said, “Yes, look at that, we made a huge mistake.” It was a huge mistake, but the mistake was that it was a whipped vote. I think that had it been an unwhipped vote, we would not have taken that decision. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned Syria. I was here for that vote, when I think we made the right decision, because we could have been getting into another Iraq situation and still be stuck there, with a huge loss of life—a loss of British life, as well as of others. That is why I believe that on these issues we should be able to vote and decide on when to take military action. We should exercise our own judgments, on the basis of our own views and consciences, because no more significant decision can be made than to send someone to where they could lose their life. That is why we should vote on these occasions. I think we will have to have a vote at some stage in the coming period, because I fear that this situation will go on and on.

Unrelated to that issue, I wish to make a plea. The International Court of Justice’s interim decision will be coming out soon, perhaps today, as some have said, or on Friday, and when it does come out it is important that we have a debate in this House. That would enable the Government to tell us what they will do in the light of that decision. The interim decision will almost certainly attach some conditions to the activities of Israel in particular, and it is important that we debate that in this House. It is also important that we have a decision-making process—a vote—on how we as a country can ensure that such a decision and its conditions are abided by and implemented.

My second brief point is that, time and again, the Prime Minister and others have said that there is no link between the Houthis’ actions and what is happening in Gaza. That argument is unsustainable. I agree with everything that has been said, by Members from across the House, about the Houthis—I condemn them outright. The basis of their beliefs, as far as I can see, has to be condemned. Their actions in Yemen and what they are doing at the moment have to be condemned. What they are doing is horrific, it is putting lives at risk and they are undermining their own people, but to say that it is completely unrelated to Gaza is unsustainable.

People have said, “Well, maybe it is ‘connected’ to Gaza,” As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, what is happening in Gaza is mobilising the Arab street across the middle east, and understandably so. People are watching the reportage of the human suffering and reacting aghast at what they are seeing on the ground in Gaza. As a result, they are putting pressure on their own regimes, right the way across, for some form of action. It is because both the US and the UK have not taken effective action that desire for action gets distorted in other forms—it is the Houthis’ excuse for their actions.

That leads us to the fact that we here have to accept our responsibility. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) talked about the House being shamed by the number of deaths—the 25,000 deaths that have taken place. We are shamed by witnessing on our television screens the operations and the amputations of children’s limbs without anaesthetics. We should be shamed, but we should be more shamed by our refusal to act soon enough. I think we were complicit with Biden in basically saying to the Israelis, “You have more time to sort this out with military action, rather than looking at a real strategic plan for the future.” We have a responsibility because of our history over the past century and a half in the region, so we should come forward with our own proposals soon. Some have been mentioned already and I do think that the recognition of Palestine is important, because that sends a message to Israel and elsewhere—

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[John McDonnell]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I am going to try to keep within the time if I can.

Recognition of Palestine will send a message to Israel that it has to come to terms with that reality at some stage. I know people have said that we have to get rid of Hamas, but, as soon as we can secure peace, Palestinians should be given the opportunity to vote for their leadership and be allowed to exercise democracy. I think people will be surprised at how the Palestinians will vote; I think they will vote for peace and for those who advocate peace. That might give us the opportunity to consolidate the Palestinian people, who have been so divided by Israel between the west bank and Gaza. We need to think creatively, for example like that, before we blunder even further. I hope the Government will now come forward with a more constructive plan, and let us vote on it.