Iran

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I am delighted to have been called so early in the debate! Let me start by thanking the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for initiating this timely, topical and important debate on not only the treatment of protesters in Iran, but the political situation there. As we know, it is destabilising not just for its own people, but for those across the region and, indeed, the globe.

I want to reiterate some of the comments that have been made, notably those made by the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) and the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I do not have a problem with Iran the country—its history, its culture and its proud, proud people. What I do have is a problem with the evil, barbaric, tyrannical, murderous regime of the supreme leader and the treatment of his own people.

On 16 September, the brutal death—I would call it a murder—of Mahsa Amini shook the world. Up until that point, we had spoken about Iran numerous times in the Chamber and Westminster Hall, and there had been numerous calls, as there have been today, for the UK to go further, for instance by proscribing Hezbollah and Hamas across the globe and, now, proscribing the IRGC. We have been calling for that for a number of years, and there is cross-party, cross-Chamber and cross-House support for it, yet still we are waiting. That death on 16 September, however, not only shook us in this country, but shook the people of Iran. When there were protests a couple of years ago, they were stamped out very quickly with brutal treatment from the regime.

What we are seeing now from the brave women and men of that country makes it clear that they have had enough. There is now a hope and aspiration for real regime change, because they know what the penalties are. They know of the risks not only to their own safety and their own lives, but to the lives of their families, and they are still prepared to protest. For that, they have not only our thanks and our solidarity, but our support as well.

When we all watched the World Cup there were many things we took from it, but what I took from the England-Iran game were the powerful statements by the Iranian football team before the match, during the singing of the national anthems, and then after the match. They did not want to stand by and support their regime. They did not want to support what was happening in their country. We see that not only with the football team, as all sportspeople are repressed. They fear not only that they will be murdered if they go back to Iran, but attacks, torture and, ultimately, execution. As the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, we are seeing state-sponsored murder on a brutal scale.

This is not just about Iran’s treatment of its own people. Iran has destabilised the region for numerous years in how it treats the Kurds and in its approach to Israel and the entire middle east. More recently, it has provided attack drones for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.

We have also seen the Iranian regime take a negative approach not only to the state of Israel but to Jewish people across the globe, by propagating antisemitism, including holocaust denial. As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day, it is now more important than ever to call out the evil of holocaust denial. In recent years, we have seen high-profile competitions such as the international holocaust cartoon competition being held in Iran with the Iranian Government’s support. The most recent competition was held in 2016, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and it had 150 entries, all depicting holocaust denial and claims of holocaust hoaxes. The competition tries to denigrate one of the worst crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. Despite the denial of Iran’s Foreign Minister, the holocaust cartoon competition is linked to the Iranian regime, as confirmed by Iran’s Ministry of Culture. Conflicting statements are a recurring theme of the Iranian regime, which produces different messages for domestic and overseas consumption.

Iran has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism. It funds Hamas, Hezbollah and numerous regimes across the middle east, including in Lebanon and, as the Chairman of the Select Committee said, Syria. We need to continue calling this out, because Iran’s support for terrorism is a global threat, particularly to Jewish communities, which have been repeatedly targeted. The most notable example is the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina building in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds. This continued threat is a major reason why Jewish communities around the world, including in my constituency, require security outside schools, synagogues, community centres and events.

In 2012, Iran or Hezbollah was connected to incidents targeting Jewish communities or Israeli interests in India, Georgia, Thailand, Singapore, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Kenya and this country. This continued threat is a major reason why Jewish communities around the world fear for their safety, and it is why we need organisations such as the Community Security Trust to make sure that our Jewish constituents and friends are safe. Again, I pay tribute to the Community Security Trust’s work to keep my constituents safe to go about their daily lives.

The UK should continue to monitor the global and domestic threat from Iranian-backed terrorism and take action to limit terrorists’ ability to operate domestically, regionally and globally. The Government should be commended for supporting the security of the UK’s Jewish communities against this threat. The Government took far too long to proscribe Hezbollah, compared with other countries, but we need to have further conversations with the EU and our neighbours and friends to make sure they are also proscribing Hezbollah in its entirety.

I share the international community’s concern about a nuclear Iran, as highlighted by the Chairman of the Select Committee. The JCPOA has essentially been dead for three years, yet we have allowed Iran not only to enrich uranium but to develop greater scientific understanding and knowledge so that, if we were to take it away, it would be back in a matter of weeks. We need to do so much more, and I share those concerns.

What do we do now that the JCPOA is dead? I would love to say that we could go back to the negotiating table to find a solution, but I think that moment has passed. The Iranian regime does not care about negotiating. It does not care about the sanctions we might impose on Iran, the IRGC or the police, because so much of its economy is driven by the black market. We need to find new, innovative and meaningful ways to address the situation, but it will also involve our friends and allies in the US, the UN, Germany and France. We need to make sure we are all singing from the same hymn sheet if we are to address the situation, because we need to address not only the threat of a nuclear Iran but the state- sponsored terrorism it is exporting across the globe.

Any future UK relationship with Iran must take into account not only those destabilising factors but what Iran is doing to its own people. As we have seen, the number of murders, arrests and tortures are increasing on a daily basis.

I am sure everyone in this Chamber, in this House and, indeed, in this Parliament sends their support to every single person who is protesting, whether on the streets of Tehran or, as we saw on Sunday, the streets of London. We support their freedom from Iran’s tyrannical regime, and we back their cries of “Woman, Life, Freedom”.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.