Iran

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr McCann]

I will make some progress and then I will be happy to give way.

At home in Iran—this is important for Iranian communities throughout the United Kingdom—there is the suppression of Iranian citizens, with 650 people executed in 2010 alone, and the violent suppression of democracy protests across the region that we in this House have championed.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend add to the list of crimes committed by the Iranian regime the horrific way in which the Ahwazi Arabs have been treated for many years? Many of them have been tortured to death and many have been prevented from taking part in all the ordinary political discourse that we would expect in any other country. Does he agree that that is consistent with the anti-Semitism that we have seen in many of the public pronouncements of the regime?

[Mr McCann]

Sadly, it is a consistency that runs through the regime, like lettering through a stick of rock, alongside all the actions of the Iranian Government and the Iranian leadership. What it tells me about the leadership that we are dealing with is that we must consider all possible measures to determine how to move forward.

Do I believe, as the motion suggests, that the use of force against Iran would be wholly counter-productive? I do not know the precise answer to that question, but what I do know is that ruling it out would be counter-productive. It would say to an extreme set of people that their tactics have paid off, and the willingness of the Iranian regime to ignore the international community and six UN Security Council resolutions, and to repress the Iranian people’s rights, tells me that diplomacy and sanctions should not be our only options. The Foreign Secretary pointed out on television yesterday, quite properly, the complex nature of the threat, and for those reasons, nothing should be ruled out.

I appreciate that many wish to speak, so I will finish on this point. Two weeks ago at a local high school in my constituency, I listened to a gentleman named Harry Bibring, who, as a 12-year-old in March 1938, witnessed Nazi troops march into Vienna. Days later, the persecution of the Jews started in that city. In that same year, the Peace Pledge Union, a British pacifist organisation, asked people to make this pledge:

“I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.”

I am sure that all would agree that those are laudable aims and that all of us would be prepared to sign up to that pledge to remove all causes of war. But I am also acutely aware of Edmund Burke’s quote:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

That is why I oppose the motion and will support the amendment.

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[Mr Hague]

We have made and will make that point to India, as we have to many other nations. My hon. Friend mentions China, which, perhaps for other reasons, has substantially reduced its purchases of oil from Iran in the past two months. We will energetically make the argument that he calls on us to make.

[Chris Bryant]

I wholly support everything that the Foreign Secretary has said about diplomatic efforts and I want to achieve the same outcome as every other hon. Member, but my anxiety is that diplomatic language, by moving from forceful to robust to pugnacious to belligerent, can sometimes have a ratchet effect that makes the use of violent force almost inevitable. I hope that he will stick with forceful and assertive, and move no further.

[Mr Hague]

It is certainly our approach to be forceful and assertive without being belligerent, and I hope that we will be able to continue with that posture. We have had many occasions to be forceful in our language about Iranian behaviour over recent months.

Our policy is that while we remain unswervingly committed to diplomacy, it is important to emphasise to Iran that all options remain on the table. This policy is not new. It was the position of the previous Government, and it is the position of our closest allies not to rule out the use of military force while emphasising that peaceful diplomacy is the way forward that we all wish to see.

No United States President has made a more powerful appeal to Iran peacefully to negotiate an end to its differences with the international community than President Obama, and yet as he said in his State of the Union address last month,

“America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”

That is the approach of our Government, and it was also the approach of the previous Government. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), said when asked in July 2007 if he would rule out a military strike against Iran:

“I firmly believe that the sanctions policy that we are pursuing will work, but I’m not one who’s going forward to say that we rule out any particular form of action”.

It is also the position of France and Germany, and I believe that on this issue we and our key allies should stand united together.

Iran has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the middle east, some of which are deemed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Iranian revolutionary guard corps commanders have repeatedly hinted at their ability and willingness to strike at their opponents overseas. Iranian officials have threatened to use military force to close the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital trading corridors, including for the passage of oil supplies.

Under these circumstances, no prudent Government, despite what the motion implies, could rule out any use of force in the future. Let me be clear that ruling out other options would be irresponsible given the serious nature of our concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme and the consequences of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. We should not relieve Iran of any of the pressure it is currently facing. If we rule out military action, Iran might perceive that it can get away with aggressive actions. Taking other options off the table might cause Iran to respond by stepping up its aggressive and destabilising activity in the region. Taking options off the table would also have implications for the positions of several nations in the Gulf and potentially undermine their security. This adds up to a compelling case to keep the policy that we have.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I was with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) for much of his speech until he reached the very end. The same is true of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). I confess that I began the day rather sympathetic to his motion, largely because the preferred profession for many people in my constituency, as has been shown in many opinion polls—and this is true across many former mining constituencies—is the armed forces. I do not want to send more British armed forces—young people from the Rhondda—to go to fight in a war a long way from home that may have no discernible goal, and may have a very uncertain future. However, I did not find his argument persuasive. In fact, I found it the opposite of persuasive. I found it deeply unpersuasive and I will not be able to support him tonight.

This is not about whether we like or dislike the Iranian regime. I do not think there can be anybody in the House who likes the Iranian regime, perhaps because of its phenomenal and extraordinary use of the death penalty. It owned up to 252 cases last year but the figure is far more likely to be 600, which puts Iran second only to China, which is a much larger country. There are currently 143 people under the age of 18 on death row in Iran. It is a security state, in the way that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, described the term in the late 1930s. It has laws against harming national security, against disturbing public order and also against insulting public officials. The regime uses them whenever it wants to repress dissent.

I found the hon. Gentleman’s argument about Israel to be naive. I would rarely use that term in the House, but a pedantic argument about the semantics of what Ahmadinejad said or did not say is neither here nor there. The truth is that there is a powerful body of opinion within the leadership in the Iranian regime which is wholly inimical to the success of the Israeli state. Whatever criticism I may have of Israel and its failure to adhere to United Nations resolutions and the rest, I believe that Israelis have the right to self-determination and to believe that they can live in their country in security.

[Mr Baron]

The hon. Gentleman should be a little careful with his words. I did not argue for one moment that there are not those within Iran—many within Iran—who loathe the state of Israel. There are many Arabs and Jews within the state of Israel who disagree with their own Government on many issues, but that cannot justify military intervention. He needs to be careful when he talks about naiveté. I would suggest to him that it is naive to pursue failed policies.

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[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has not heard the rest of what I am going to say. Perhaps he will be less unhappy with some of that. I would argue back to him that the theocratic argument that is used by many in Iran, including very senior figures in the regime and those who have direct access to military power there, may at some point lead to direct assaults on Israel. It would be understandable for the Israelis to want to protect themselves. In that set of circumstances, Ahmadinejad could easily have said, “I’m terribly sorry. I gather there’s been a terrible misinterpretation of what I said which has gone around the world, and I would like to correct it because I did not mean that Israel could be wiped from the map.”

There are other reasons why I hate the regime. Its record on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, which I have referred to in many speeches over the years, is shocking, but it is getting worse. In September last year three young men were executed for homosexuality. In the past the regime has tried to maintain that such cases were non-consensual homosexuality. On this occasion it owned up to the fact that it is executing people for consensual homosexuality.

I would also highlight what the regime has done to the Ahwazi Arabs. Those are a people who are often forgotten because they do not fit into many people’s understanding of what Iran must look like, and certainly do not fit into what Ahmadinejad’s version of Iran looks like. In September last year four Ahwazis were sentenced to death for “enmity against God”. Likewise, a 19-year-old, Naser Albushoka, another Ahwazi, recently died under torture. The repression of the Ahwazis has gone on for many years.

This is also not about whether any of us believe that Iran should have nuclear weapons. I do not think there is anybody in the House who would support Iran having nuclear weapons. It is about the potential justice or injustice, rightness or wrongness, of possible military intervention.

There is a series of questions that we always need to ask ourselves before we engage in military action. First, is the action of the aggressor certain? Are we certain that it is either doing this or going to do it? At this moment it is not absolutely certain. I am fairly convinced about what the Iranian regime intends to do with its military capability, but it is not absolutely certain that it intends aggression.

Secondly, is this a grave ill or a major act of aggression? Thus far, it is not as grave as many of the other things that have happened in other countries, not least Syria.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I am very engaged with everything that the hon. Gentleman says. Does he agree that no one wants to go down the road of action against Iran? Does he take the same comfort as I do from the first line of the amendment that what we all want to see is the British Government and the Governments of the world doing everything that they can to secure a peaceful resolution to the issue that we face, and that all we are discussing is keeping on the back burner, as distant as we can, any idea of military action?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, sort of. I will come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point in a moment. We must analyse whether there are better means of achieving the end that we want. As the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary said, there clearly still are better means that we have not yet exhausted and that we need to pursue to their logical end.

Would there be a clear goal if military action were to be taken against Iran? It is difficult to see what that clear goal would look like. Similarly, would it be achievable if we knew what that goal was? As the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) said, it is difficult to see how it would be possible to achieve that secure goal. Would it be proportionate, not only to the aggression being shown, but to the action that we choose to take in other cases, because otherwise we might be accused of hypocrisy? That is undoubtedly true for many countries when they look at how we choose not to force the implementation of UN resolutions in relation to Israel but force their implementation in relation to others. Similarly, is there a danger that the outcome of military action might be even worse than the result of not engaging in military action? That is always the toughest question. We look at what is happening in Syria at the moment, and our heart goes out to the people there, but would military intervention from the west make for a better or a worse situation? It is still uncertain whether our intervention in Libya and elsewhere will produce the goods that we always hoped for.

I have a real worry about what I would call the ratchet effect. Today we are forceful in our language. Tomorrow forceful is not enough, so we have got to be assertive. The next time we have got to be aggressive, then we have to be pugnacious, then belligerent, then bellicose, and then we find ourselves at the doorstep of war. That is in part what happened in relation to the step up towards military intervention in Iraq. We have to be careful. The Foreign Secretary is a very persuasive man in many cases, but sometimes he is so eloquent that his language ratchets things up.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I have taken two interventions and others wish to speak.

I worry that like a spanner that one can use to ratchet up but not down, if we use language that is exorbitant and goes too far, we will end up in a situation where, from no real decision of our own, we may be at the doorstep of war. [Interruption.] I understand that they ratchet up as well, but this is true also of the Falklands. The Argentines can huff and puff all they want, but quite often it is best to leave them huffing and puffing, rather than to rattle the sabre back at them.

I would say two things in closing. First, we must put considerable trust in the European Union process. This is one of the areas where going it alone for the UK is unlikely to achieve great success. Not that anyone is proposing that. Just going it alone with Israel and the United States or a coalition of the willing, or whatever one wants to call it, would not be a good idea. Binding in the E3 plus 3 has thus far been an extremely successful process and has avoided war.

Finally, I believe that the Israelis, contrary to what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said, would be wholly wrong to take unilateral action. I do not think that they would be able to do so or that they would be successful if they tried. If they were to take from our decision tonight the message that we believe that they should take military action, they would be wrong.