Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Polak, for initiating this debate and, once again, giving me the opportunity to agree with the Minister before he speaks; I have no doubt that he and I will be saying the same thing. It is good that the noble Lord, Lord Polak, has given me that opportunity.

It is absolutely right that the Government support efforts to restore the JCPOA. The aim in the immediate term must be for Tehran to reverse its enrichment programme to within limits agreed in the initial agreement. The US’s re-engagement with Iran should be a part of this. But I do accept—and the noble Lord and others are right to draw attention to—the wider issues that are not currently considered by the negotiations. Certainly, for too long, the political leaders of Iran have acted outside the international rules-based order. While this is in part due to its nuclear policy, the JCPOA says nothing about its ballistic missile programme, which is designed to deliver nuclear weapons. But I think, as many noble Lords have said in the debate, that the issues are not mutually exclusive.

Our concerns about human rights, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, do not stop us working with other allies in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular. The Minister has shared his concerns with me about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. But there is a need for some of the regional issues to be properly addressed, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, on a multilateral basis. Those have to be undertaken in a longer-term approach in the Middle East. When I say things are not mutually exclusive in terms of reaching an agreement with Iran on the nuclear programme, that does not exclude addressing the serious threat that Iran poses to other neighbours in the region and Israel in particular.

We clearly need to move Iran’s continued support for terrorist groups and militias up the international agenda, and, although it is important to monitor and restrict Tehran’s nuclear capability, we cannot pretend that it is the only obstacle preventing stable relations with Iran. We should also consider that, despite the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, Iran continues to engage in state hostage-taking, with many others still arbitrarily detained. Its human rights violations against its own people have been noted by noble Lords in the debate, and these persist.

If negotiations to return to the JCPOA are to be considered successful, they must, in the long term, go beyond Iran’s nuclear policy and consider not only the regional issues that noble Lords have highlighted but the wider policy issues that I addressed. I welcome this debate—it is a good opportunity—but turning our backs on the opportunities that the JCPOA gives us would be the wrong move at this stage.