Middle East: Recent Developments

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, perhaps I may begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests. I am a director of a company which has investments in Iran. I am a director of other companies with interests elsewhere in the Arab part of the Middle East. I am also unpaid chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce, which many noble Lords will be delighted to hear has a sharply declining membership.

I want to make comments, first, about Syria and, secondly, about the nuclear negotiations with Iran. The headlines have been dominated obviously by the tragic situation in Syria. The Minister in his excellent speech outlined the recent most regrettable and tragic events. Inevitably, these have given rise to cries for intervention, but those who call out for intervention are less forthcoming about precisely what they mean. Are they talking about safe havens? Are they talking about aerial support? Are they talking about supplying arms?

When I listen to all this talk about intervention, I feel it is as though we learnt nothing from the disaster in Iraq. As the Minister tellingly said, Libya may well be an exception but I do not think we can escape the fact that the history of liberal interventionism in recent years has emphatically not been an unqualified success. In these situations, whatever the pressures, it should encourage us to be cautious about intervention.

We have yet to hear the conclusions of the Chilcot inquiry about what lessons should be drawn from the invasion of Iraq. Some conclusions I think suggest themselves. First, we never know enough about the countries where we choose to intervene—about the cultural and tribal loyalties, which often are concealed where there are dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. We learn about them only when we are there. Secondly, the fact of intervention in a country by foreigners often stirs up nationalism and religious fervour. Thirdly, intervention may be done in the name of saving lives but it usually costs lives in large numbers. In Iraq, it was something like 100,000. In Afghanistan, hardly a day goes by without President Karzai or the Pakistanis complaining about the collateral damage—the inevitable damage from the use of drones.

Bad as the situation in Syria is, it could be made worse by an ill timed intervention. “First, do no harm” is not a bad candidate for the first rule of diplomacy. But we are now in a situation where the United States in Syria appears to be co-ordinating the supply of arms to an opposition which is divided and came to blows in its meeting in Cairo, and one where some members of the opposition, particularly the National Co-ordination Committee, are totally opposed to all foreign intervention and the supply of arms.

We need to be careful that we do not get into the situation of the United States in Afghanistan in the 1980s where the United States’s conviction that the enemy of my enemy is my friend led it to support Bin Laden and the Taliban. What, one wonders, is Qatar, a country of perhaps 150,000 people, doing throwing if not its weight its money around in Syria? I am sure that the Government do not believe that Saudi Arabia is aiding the opposition in Syria because it is dedicated to creating a liberal secular democracy there.

Lives are being lost every day in Syria, as we have heard today. There cannot be a military solution to the conflict. Supplying arms can only make it worse. Diplomacy is essential. Neither side can win. Attention is focused on the removal of Mr Assad but even if and when he is removed, we will still have to negotiate with the huge state apparatus and the huge army there. It will not be possible just to wipe out all these elements at once.

For that reason, I very much welcome what the Minister said about still supporting the Kofi Annan plan—there seems no real alternative to it—for a ceasefire, but a ceasefire that is imposed on both sides and monitored much more heavily than is being done at present. What you cannot do is both support the Annan plan and supply arms at the same time.

This conflict is not about Syria or promoting democracy in Syria. It is about the geopolitical aims of other powers—of the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It would be tragic if the battle was fought out to the destruction of Syria as it was in Iraq. It would be tragic if it led to the expulsion of religious minorities and Christians. I was glad to hear my noble friend highlighting the danger of that. It would be disastrous if it spread to the destabilisation of Lebanon as well.

I turn now to Iran, the nuclear issue and the nuclear negotiations. Indeed, the nuclear issue is not just about Iran possibly developing nuclear weapons. It is also about Iran’s place in the region and the negotiations have to be about that as well. Iran’s main rival in the Middle East is not Israel; it is Saudi Arabia. The two theocracies have little in common and I believe that it is debatable which of the two theocracies in the long run will prove to be the more reliable and possible ally of the West. Saudi Arabia is just, if not more, assertive as Iran in spreading its own brand of Islam—Wahhabism—which is much more inimical to western interests. But whatever the truth of that, I hope that the West will have nothing to do with the suggestion of Henry Kissinger about creating a Sunni crescent in order to counterbalance the so-called Shia crescent. That would be as irresponsible as encouraging a Catholic crescent against a Protestant crescent.

Whatever one thinks about Iran, it will be necessary to live with Iran. I condemn without reservation the repression, the imprisonment of the opposition, the torture, the beatings, the threats against Israel and the suppression of the media. People I personally know have been imprisoned in Iran and others live under the threat of that. But Iran is a country with which we will have to live. I believe that a negotiated settlement with Iran is far better than a military attack. I strongly agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said.

Iran is a country of 70 million people. It cannot be locked up in a cupboard and isolated. That is just not realistic. It is important that talks continue despite the difficulties. But we need to show Iran what it stands to gain at the end of the process if it makes concessions subject to verification. We forget that sanctions will have leverage against Iran only if those sanctions are reversible. I believe that the Iranians have great doubt as to whether an American President can lift sanctions against the will of a determined Congress. The negotiations also need to address the real security fears of Iran—and it does have security fears.

The West may be in danger of overbidding, calling, for example, for the closure of the Fordow facility, primarily, I suspect, because although it is under IAEA supervision, it is none the less underground. But to call for its closure is like saying to Iran, “Please make your facilities available for aerial attack”. Mr Peter Jenkins, the UK former ambassador to the IAEA, has argued that the West should allow Iran to enrich uranium on its soil but under the tightest possible IAEA safeguards. That is what 17 or 18 other countries do, some of which in the past have had programmes to do weapons research in the nuclear area. To some it appears that we are demanding a higher standard—a double standard—from Iran.

Sanctions are undoubtedly having an effect on the Iranian economy, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said. But the sanctions almost amount to a form of economic warfare, and they have been accompanied, as the noble Baroness said, by cyber-warfare, whose legality is questionable and which we may live to regret, as well as by the assassination of Iranian personnel—something that the Government have rightly condemned. We must understand that Iranian attitudes are hardened and formed by these events as well.

Iran is able to stand hardship; they are a battle-hardened people, having been through a revolution, a war with Iraq and facing these threats today. Even critics of the regime are the strongest defenders of the nuclear programme in Iran. To my mind, although I know that the Government take a different view, it is unlikely that sanctions will force the regime to capitulate. If they did bring the regime to its knees and then force it to capitulate, that would not necessarily be a good thing.

Machiavelli once wrote that,

“forced agreements will be kept neither by Princes nor by Republics”.

Lord Salisbury said much the same thing when he said that, “the first evil is war and the second evil an obvious diplomatic triumph”. An unreasonable forced bargain runs the risk of not being kept. A sensible negotiated settlement will make a real contribution to the stability of the region.