Iran: Military Power

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, this is an extremely good point. We can go only so far with sanctions, due to all the reasons that your Lordships are fully aware of and the fact that Iran has its allies, which are not remotely interested in stopping—and in fact are encouraging—its proliferation. We sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety. We have sanctioned more than 400 Iranian individuals and organisations to do with weapons proliferation, regional conflicts, human rights violations, and terrorism. Since October 2022, we have sanctioned a further 56 IRGC-related organisations and officials. So we are taking as much action as we can.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the point of the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is that sanctions may not be working. Iran has been subject, on and off, to quite stringent sanctions for some 40 years—yet it has developed state-of-the-art drones that are now being used in Ukraine. What would my noble friend the Minister see as turning up a notch beyond economic sanctions and looking at ways of effectively deterring the ayatollahs?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The key is to keep diplomatic channels open—it has to be. That is the only way this will be resolved in the long term. On drone technology, we introduced a new set of sanctions in December, and last month all components and everything to do with drone technology were included in these stringent sanctions.