Situation in the Gulf

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point about Qatar, because LNG is absolutely critical to the global economy. That is one of the main reasons, alongside oil, that we have to maintain freedom of navigation. We have good discussions with Qatar and all our allies in the Gulf, and we are expecting strong support from them.

[Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary mentioned Iran’s malign interventions in the region. While the House may be rightly concerned about the strait of Hormuz, terrifying videos were released last week from Yemen of young boys between eight and 18 at the 300 jihadi training camps run by the Iranian-backed Houthis chanting, “Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse upon the Jews! Victory to Islam!” We should add that to last week’s $430,000 donation to Hezbollah, the drone attacks, also last week, with Iranian technology, and the 30 academics in opposition who have been summarily sentenced to death in Yemen by the Iranian-backed Houthis. Does the Foreign Secretary accept that the tanker crisis is just part of the problem in the Gulf region involving Iran? We have to take a broader brush to this issue and not just focus on the tanker crisis because it affects us directly.

[Mr Hunt]

Yes, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He speaks very powerfully of one country where we are see the malign impact of Iranian sponsorship, and we doing everything we can in Yemen. We have, against expectations, managed to get a peace process going in Yemen, and one of our main hopes is that that will decouple the Houthis from their Iranian paymasters, so that they can take part in a Government of national unity and contribute more constructively to peace in Yemen than the way that he talked about, because what he said is very worrying.