Iran

Debate between Gavin Williamson and Lord Cryer

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) on securing this important and timely debate.

As we have heard many times in and outside the Chamber, the Iranian regime’s latest wave of homicidal attacks on its own people began in September last year after the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian police. Since the crackdown against the subsequent protests began, more than 500 people have been killed, more than 50 people have been executed and at least 20,000 have been detained. Those are rough figures; they are probably an underestimate of what has actually happened, for obvious reasons.

At the apex of every brutal activity perpetrated by the Tehran regime is the IRGC, as the hon. Member said. It is a worldwide operation, and let us be clear what we are dealing with: the clerical fascists and homicidal maniacs who run Iran, and their monstrous servants in the IRGC, are effectively the modern-day version of the Nazis. If they had been around in 1939, they would have been advocating declaring war, but they would have been on the other side, not the side of the allies. They want to wipe Israel off the face of the planet, they want to murder Jewish people and gay men and women, and they want to take women as a whole back to the stone age. They are doing their best to do that not only in Iran, but elsewhere.

That repellent view of the world also applies to Tehran’s proxies. We are dealing not just with Hezbollah and Hamas, as bad as they are, but with the criminal gangs to which the hon. Member referred. They operate in this country, across Europe, in North America and elsewhere. That terrorist and criminal network poses a clear threat, way beyond Iran and the middle east.

I would have thought that the very least the Government—indeed, any democratic Government—could do is proscribe the IRGC in its entirety, as the hon. Member said. What perplexes me is that I and many other Members on both sides of the House have raised this issue repeatedly on the Floor of the House of Commons. I have a lot of respect for the Minister, but I have heard Minister after Minister expressing sympathy with full proscription at the Dispatch Box, and then nothing happens. That leads me and Members on both sides of the House to the conclusion that FCDO and Home Office Ministers sympathise with the idea of proscription, but that somebody in Downing Street, the FCDO or the Home Office is blocking it. I for one cannot see the rationale behind failing to proscribe the IRGC.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that there are certain similarities with the reluctance to proscribe the political wing of Hezbollah? There is a lot of political will to make that proscription happen, but there seems to be a reluctance within the FCDO. Are there not parallels with the IRGC there?

[John Cryer]

That is probably true. The rationale is normally that elements at the heart of Government say, “We still have to talk to these people.” Well, actually, they do not need to communicate with them. We are talking about Nazi terrorists, not a rational organisation. The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point.

I believe strongly that no Member of this House or of the House of Lords should have any relationship whatever with any arm of the Iranian state. Anybody who has been elected to the House of Commons or sits in the House of Lords and who has a relationship, particularly a pecuniary one, with Press TV—I think we all know what I am talking about—should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are taking money from fascists.