Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Programme

Debate between Glyn Davies and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend speaks wise words, and I am not surprised because he is always on top of such important issues.

That leads me on to a point I was going to make about the new President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in June 2013. President Rouhani is meant to be the bee’s knees. The former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), has said how much he admires him. Hassan Rouhani spent some time at Glasgow Caledonian university and knows this country well, but he is not a pleasant individual at all. It is not as though he has recently emerged with an unblemished record; he has been deeply involved in the unpleasant Iranian regime for quite some time. He was involved in the Islamic revolution when it started in 1978, and he helped Ayatollah Khomeini found the regime. Between August 2003 and October 2005, the now President Rouhani was Iran’s chief negotiator in nuclear weapons talks. In 2004, he gave a speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, in which he said:

“While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [nuclear conversion] facility in Isfahan. By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work there”.

Those words reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) that Iran may well be using the talks and the supposed rapprochement as a ruse to cover up the fact that it is quite close to developing a nuclear warhead but, critically, needs six to 12 months to finish its programme. What better way to ensure that it has the time and space to complete the manufacture of a nuclear warhead than to engage the international community in talks?

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward a debate of such great concern to us all. Does he see any grounds for optimism—or only danger—in an Iranian leader who is so much more able to enter into discussions than his predecessor, Ahmadinejad, who was clearly a danger to everybody; or is he just packaging and is there nothing at all in his greater willingness to talk with other leaders?

[Mr Hollobone]

It is difficult enough to be minor politicians in this country, as we are, having to deal with different issues and factions; it must be a nightmare being a politician in an unstable and unpleasant place such as Iran. I am sure that President Rouhani has to balance all sorts of different issues and say things he does not believe to appease one faction in relation to another.

I hope that I am wrong, but I suspect that Iran is attempting to buy space to cross the nuclear finish line, so that it can have a nuclear weapon. The prestige of President Rouhani and others in the Iranian regime would then be at its peak, because Iran would be a nuclear power, able to throw its weight around in the middle east and the world as never before. If I am wrong, that is great, but if I am right, we face the prospect of Iran being a nuclear power. Once it is such a power, it will be too late for the world to do anything about it.