Iran

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add,

‘supports the Government’s efforts to reach a peaceful, negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue through a combination of pressure in the form of robust sanctions, and engagement led by the E3+3 comprising the UK, US, France, Germany, China and Russia; and recognises the value of making clear to Iran that all options for addressing the issue remain on the table.’.

I have a genuine respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). It is courageous sometimes to put forward a view that may have very little support, but as I listened to his speech, I could not but irresistibly be reminded of the remark that was made about a Minister in the 1930s, who had the reputation of being very logical. It was said of him that starting from a false premise he had moved inexorably to the wrong conclusion. I say to my hon. Friend in all honesty that I feel that he is in that situation.

Of course, we all want to see a peaceful resolution of this dispute by negotiation. I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a powerful case to see if we can have a normalisation of relations between the United States and Iran, but it takes the two to have such a negotiation, and, as he himself conceded, when President Obama put forward such a proposal, it was rejected in Tehran. There is no evidence that Tehran has changed its position. If it has changed it, it would be very easy for it to say so.

I want to go straight to the question raised in the motion rather than to the wider issues involved, and that is whether there is a powerful or persuasive argument at this moment in time for renouncing the use of force. I presume my hon. Friend means not by the United Kingdom, but by the west—the international community in general. I believe he is profoundly wrong for three reasons. First, if the United States—the key country in this regard—the west and the international community renounced the use of force at this stage, I believe that Israel would be more likely to decide to act unilaterally. The Israelis know perfectly well that their military capability is far less than that of the United States and that the Americans, with their cruise missiles, bunker-busting bombs and other capabilities, stand a much better chance of destroying or severely degrading Iran’s nuclear capability. As long as the United States has not ruled out that option, the Israelis are under much greater pressure to allow the negotiations the best possible opportunity to produce the desired result. If that option is removed from the table, particularly by the United States, the Israelis will say, “We are sorry, but sanctions are not working and the negotiations are going nowhere. Every week that passes creates a more dangerous Iran. If no one else will act, we will.” I say to my hon. Friend that, for anyone who understands the Israeli position, this is not scaremongering, but the most likely consequence.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

If the Israelis do act unilaterally, what sanctions should be applied to them?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

The Israelis acted unilaterally against Iraq when they removed the Osirak reactor, and both the western world and the Arab world breathed a huge sign of relief. It would ultimately depend on how successful the Israelis could be, and that is a separate question.

Secondly, this is inevitably an extraordinarily complex period of diplomacy and, as other hon. Members have noted, diplomacy requires maximum pressure. It requires carrots and sticks. To reduce unnecessarily the pressure we can apply would be to act fundamentally against our own interests. There are circumstances—very limited circumstances—when it is right to rule out the use of force in advance. Let me give an example, because it is a question of disproportionate responses. When Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands, some rather foolish people said, “The United Kingdom has a nuclear weapon, so why does it not just threaten Argentina that it will use it if it does not withdraw from the Falkland Islands?” The Government at the time rightly said that under no circumstances was that an option, because it would have been an incredibly disproportionate response, and that was of course the right position to take.

However, we are not in such a situation. When a country is contemplating acquiring nuclear weapons, as the rest of the world believes Iran is, even if my hon. Friend does not, and when we know that that would dramatically alter the geopolitical balance of power in the Gulf—the capability of producing a nuclear weapon in a few weeks is as serious as actually having one—that is a huge threat. We can debate whether it is a legitimate threat, but the possibility of using conventional force to destroy that capability in order to prevent the emergence of such a nuclear weapon state is not inherently unreasonable, extreme or irrational.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I join other Members in commending the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). I say to him that being in a minority does not necessarily mean that someone is not right, and that when the House is unanimous, it is invariably wrong. I will support his motion.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I find it important when we have these debates to have a prologue condemning the theocratic regime in Iran. I am one of the Members who consistently table motions supporting human rights campaigns in Iran, most recently on the Tehran bus workers and on the persecution of the film director Panahi, whose release we have been successful in securing. I agree with the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I am fearful of again treading down the path that starts with rumours of weapons of mass destruction, goes on to sanctions, sabre-rattling and covert operations, and then develops a momentum that carries us into military action, death and destruction, and increased terrorism and instability. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) is not in his place, but I, too, worry about the approach whereby we try to negotiate peace by threatening war; it does not work that way.

Hon. Members need to be very clear about the decision that they take tonight. Those who vote against the motion and for the amendment will be sanctioning the threat of military action. In my view, if one threatens something, one has to ensure that one understands the full implications of acting on the threat, and I am not sure that there is clarity in the House about why this threat is being made. The notion of Iran being close to having nuclear weapons is open to doubt as there is no solid evidence, but as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay said, the issue is really about nuclear capability. Nuclear capability is a threat only if one believes that nuclear weapons will be used. Even in Israel, people do not believe that there will be a nuclear strike, and that is true of wise heads around the world. I cannot find any advisers in the US who are recommending to the President that action should take place on the basis of a nuclear threat. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have listened to some of the spokespeople in Israel. I have also listened to a former head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy, who said that it is all about scaremongering and that there is no threat to the state of Israel as a result of this supposed escalation.

Why are we being implicated in the threat of military action? First, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said, the threat is based not on the danger of a military attack but of Iran becoming a regional superpower. At the moment, the implications of that are not, by any means, sufficient to justify the threat of military action. Secondly, there is the argument about nuclear proliferation. If we are anxious about nuclear proliferation, we have to start with the root cause, which is Israel illegally gaining nuclear weapons. Unless we attack that root cause, the issue will not go away. Thirdly, it is about Israel’s own domestic political agenda: the crisis atmosphere suits Netanyahu and the hawks who surround him.

Fourthly, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, we are being blackmailed by Israel to the effect that if we do not support military action, it will. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the midst of the global economic crisis, there is no appetite in the US for war. That is why the Americans sent General Martin Dempsey to Tel Aviv in January to let the Israelis know that there was no such appetite. It is now time for us to face down Israel and ask what sanctions we are willing to exercise against it if it seeks to threaten military action. I fear that the debate is gaining the momentum for a military strike, which will make matters worse, not better.

We are already at war by proxy in undermining the potential for peace and change in Iran. The sanctions are a siege of Iran. Its currency is collapsing, imports of grain staples are drying up, and people are becoming impoverished. That is not undermining the regime but hardening support for it, by giving it the excuse that an external enemy is causing the impoverishment and hunger. The covert military actions carried out by organisations and individuals who we now know, as a result of exposés in Der Spiegel, were trained by Mossad, have prompted more terrorism around the world through Iran-sponsored attacks in India, Thailand and elsewhere. The cyber-war that was launched under Stuxnet, with the worm or bug that was put out to undermine Iran’s industrial complexes, has provoked even more retaliation, which has undermined some of the ability of Iran’s freedom movement to communicate with the outside world. I would welcome information on that extremely complicated cyber-attack. Did Israel sponsor it or its development? Was GCHQ alerted to it?

The actions that have taken place have escalated the potential for conflict, and they are strengthening the hard-liners in Iran and hurting the Iranian people, who are desperate to throw off the yoke of that theocracy. The way forward was spelled out by our former ambassador, Richard Dalton, who said that we needed multilateral negotiations to secure a nuclear-free zone across the middle east. Unless we tackle the issue of Israel holding nuclear weapons, we cannot confront Iran sensibly or creatively.

I reiterate that we cannot negotiate peace by threatening war, and I fear that we are again on a path that we have witnessed time and again in the House. We are threatening military action, which gains momentum that results in loss of life, including the loss of British soldiers and military personnel.