Situation in the Red Sea

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I agree with the Secretary of State and the Government that we do not want to see an escalation in the region and that we want to be proportionate in our response and calibrate our response not to provoke and antagonise, but is it not the case that we might actually be hitting the wrong target—that we are hitting proxies of Iran and, while I believe in peace and diplomacy, the malevolent factor in the region, in all of this, is Iran? It might be the case that, while we have the best of diplomatic intentions and we do not want to provoke Iran to a major conflict with NATO, the US or the UK, putting off that decision now will cost more lives in the future. Iran and the regime—not the Iranian people but the regime in Iran—are behind all this. They are the ones destabilising Israel, the Abraham accords and so on. I hope the Secretary of State will take a strategic view and make hard choices on Iran, because, whether we like it or not, it is coming.

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend makes the excellent point that Iran is behind all this. Iran is behind Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the IRGC-aligned militia that we have seen attack not just American troops—I often hear it is American personnel have been attacked 160 separate times in Syria and Iraq, but in fact about a third of those occasions involved British troops as well. On every occasion, Iran is behind all of this. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend and we are working hard to pressurise Iran into realising that its current approach can do no good at all and will destabilise the region, which it claims it does not want to do.