Iran

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.