Britain-Iran Relations

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) on securing the debate. I introduced a debate on human rights in Iran on 28 June. I do not intend to repeat all the issues that were raised then. Given the amount of time I have, I shall concentrate on two issues: the information that emerged over the summer about a massacre in 1988, and Iran’s regional aggression.

It has become known that, in 1988, the Iranian regime executed more than 30,000 people. Many of them were political prisoners held in jails. Some were people who had been released from jail, having served their sentence, but who were then summarily recalled and executed.

The majority were serving prison sentences for political activities or, as I said, had already finished their sentences. After a fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the wave of executions began in late July 1988 and continued for a few months. Many of those killed refused to repent their beliefs and as such were executed. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that the regime in Tehran not only acknowledges what happened but takes action to ensure that those responsible, many of whom are still in power, are brought to justice? Will the Minister ask the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council to order an investigation to achieve that?

I turn to some issues that have arisen in the past 15 months, since the nuclear deal was agreed. I was very much against the deal. I was disappointed that the issue of human rights was decoupled from the deal, because that was a missed opportunity to put pressure on the Iranian regime. I think it was a vainglorious attempt by President Obama to secure a legacy—a legacy that will not actually be achieved. We have seen that with the number of people that Iran has continued to execute over the past 15 months. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) talked about abortion and what is and what is not normal. It is not normal to execute nine-year-old girls.

[Mr Bacon]

I did not say it was.

[Dr Offord]

I never suggested that my hon. Friend said it was, but I am saying that it is not normal to execute nine-year-old girls, or boys at the age of 15 or, indeed, to gouge out anyone’s eyes. It is not normal to execute people in the ways and numbers in which they are currently being executed in Iran. There has been much comment in the debate about the different sections of Iranian society that have been persecuted, including the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Baha’i. I received an email from the National Union of Journalists about its brothers and sisters in Iran who are not able to undertake their work as journalists and are not in a free civil society. I do not feel that that is normal either.

In July this year, the UK’s ambassador to the United Nations expressed his concern about Iran’s regional aggression, declaring that the ballistic missiles tested by Iran are designed to deliver nuclear weapons. In his speech to the UN Security Council, Ambassador Rycroft made it clear that Iran’s

“continued testing of ballistic missiles which are designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons is destabilising to regional security and inconsistent with Resolution 2231”,

as others have said already.

In the past 12 hours or so, there has been much comment in the media about the Foreign Secretary’s comments, in yesterday’s debate on Syria, about the role of Russia. But Russia is not the only game in town. Russia may have what we might call interests in—or may interfere in—Ukraine and Syria, but Iran interferes in and has much greater interests in other parts of the region. It interferes not only in Yemen, but in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. The tentacles from Tehran continue to spread. That has been allowed and achieved as a result of the nuclear deal unfreezing assets that the Revolutionary Guard and others are using to cause dissent in the region.