Iran’s Nuclear Programme

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

No, and I do not think anyone would believe that that is Iran’s ultimate intent. The latest intelligence, for example, showing that bunkers have been constructed underground in which to hold some of that material, makes clear what the ultimate intent of Iran is on this issue.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way one last time, and then I shall make some progress.

[Dr Offord]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Many people have focused on transgressions against the JCPOA, but because of the infamous sunset provisions in the 2015 deal, Iran will be able to legitimately undertake a full nuclear programme. That means that we could be facing a nuclear Iran as early as 2025. Without doing anything, we are already in a very difficult and dangerous scenario.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is correct. I will make this point in a moment, but there is no harm in restating it now: the original deal contained a number of sunset provisions, and the proposed deal, as reported, merely keeps those sunset provisions in exactly the same form. Even if we were to sign the deal tomorrow, it would begin to fade away in 2023. One really has to question the point of signing up to the proposed deal.

Iran stands on the verge of possessing a nuclear bomb. In fact, intelligence suggests it has sufficient enriched uranium today for at least two nuclear weapons. It has progressed far beyond the parameters of the JCPOA, so restoring Iran to the old deal has none of the benefits we once thought it would. The JCPOA’s time has been and gone; the Rubicon has been crossed.

After earlier talk of a longer and stronger deal, more recent rounds of the nuclear talks have seen US negotiators make concession after painful concession in an attempt to bring Iran back to the deal. We now see before us the contours of a shorter and weaker agreement—one that many have taken to dismissing as JCPOA-minus. In that agreement the Iranian regime will be reintegrated into the international community and afforded huge economic benefits that, crucially, will be channelled not into education, healthcare or infrastructure projects but into supporting and promoting terrorist activities, for instance through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s web of proxies across the region, and the restrictions on its nuclear programme will last for a fraction of the time. It is unclear whether this stands to strengthen efforts for non-proliferation.

I believe that a new framework is required. Proponents of the JCPOA spoke of its ability to restrict Iran’s break-out time to one year. In view of the reduction of this to as little as a few weeks, we need the Government to recognise that this is simply not going to work, and that any agreement that could obtain the consent of this House—certainly of Members who take my view—will need to have very significantly longer sunset clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it. It is, for all the reasons set out by my right hon. Friend, a timely debate. It is also timely because it comes after the report of the board of governors of the IAEA on 30 May and the subsequent resolution of 8 June, which censures Iran for non-co-operation with the agency’s inquiry into nuclear traces found at three non-declared sites. That action on the part of the agency is certainly a step forward, but it goes nowhere near far enough.

Iran’s nuclear programme has been known about since 2002, when the existence of the facilities at Natanz and Arak were revealed by the Iranian democratic Opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The Iranian regime has always asserted that its programme is for civilian purposes only and has always denied that it is attempting to produce nuclear weapons. That simply defies belief. As we have heard, despite the terms of the JCPOA, Iran started enriching uranium to 20% in 2010, and later the same year it moved to 60% enrichment. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, that is considerably beyond anything that is needed for civilian purposes.

In its report of 1 June, the Institute for Science and International Security concluded:

“Iran’s breakout timeline is now at zero. It has enough 60 percent enriched uranium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) to be assured it could fashion a nuclear explosive. If Iran wanted to further enrich its 60 percent HEU up to weapon-grade HEU, or 90 percent, it could do so within a few weeks with only a few of its advanced centrifuge cascades.”

Clearly the time pressure is enormous. The report went on to note:

“Whether or not Iran enriches its HEU up to 90 percent, it can have enough HEU for two nuclear weapons within one month after starting breakout.”

That is, by any standards, a very worrying state of affairs.

It is made all the more worrying by Iran’s increasingly erratic and aggressive stance in the region and, indeed, the wider world. As my right hon. Friend rightly pointed out, Iran is an active state sponsor of terrorism—probably the world’s leading state sponsor. Its proxies are engaged in fomenting conflict in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. My right hon. Friend mentioned the Istanbul incident; I would like to mention the incident in June 2018, when a bomb plot targeting a gathering of Iranian pro-democracy supporters in Paris was disrupted by the French and Belgian authorities. An Iranian diplomat accredited to the embassy in Vienna was subsequently convicted for leading the conspiracy and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Three accomplices were convicted, and their sentences were upheld, with two years added, by the court of appeal in Antwerp in May. Iran is certainly exporting terrorism not just throughout the region, but across the world.

[Dr Offord]

I feel the need to correct my right hon. Friend on that point. It was not just Iranian politicians and Opposition members who were targeted; five of us from the British Parliament were at risk of being blown up in that terrorist incident.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is entirely right: it was a gathering of supporters of the NCRI, which takes place every year in Paris and attracts supporters from all round the world. As he points out, had that conspiracy been successful, its consequences would have been catastrophic.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newark mentioned Iran’s revolutionary guard corps. That is, in effect, a state within a state. It directs, leads and executes the terrorist activities of Iran. As he pointed out, it is a proscribed organisation in the United States, and many will wonder why it is not proscribed in this country. I believe that it should be. Iran is already a global danger, but a nuclear-armed Iran is an appalling and unacceptable prospect.

The IAEA report makes it clear that the Iranian regime has, effectively, been playing games with the agency for many years. At three locations that the agency requested to visit, the regime razed buildings to the ground and removed structural material and soil, clearly in an effort to disguise what was happening there. Nevertheless, the agency discovered traces of anthropogenic nuclear material. The report states that the regime has

“not provided explanations that are technically credible”

for the presence of nuclear material in those locations. The Tehran regime has clearly shown by its actions that it has no intent whatever to co-operate in good faith with the IAEA. Not only is the regime taking steps to advance its enrichment programme by installing more advanced centrifuges; it is doing all it can to restrict the ability of IAEA inspectors to monitor its nuclear sites. It has turned off two devices that the agency relied on to monitor the enrichment of uranium gas at Natanz and initiated plans to remove 27 surveillance cameras from other nuclear facilities.

On 20 June, Reuters cited a confidential IAEA report, which revealed that:

“Iran is escalating its uranium enrichment further by preparing to use advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground Fordow site that can more easily switch between enrichment levels”.

In a joint statement to the board of governors of the IAEA on 27 June, the UK, France and Germany expressed their concern about the continued nuclear activities in breach of the JCPOA. They pointed out that the alarming accumulation of enriched material is cause for great concern and is further reducing the time that it would take Iran to break out towards its first nuclear weapon.

The position, therefore, is that it is clearly known that Iran is taking active steps to produce highly enriched uranium, the only credible purpose of which can be to produce nuclear weapons. The question must be whether there is any purpose in continuing to urge Iran to fulfil its obligations under the JCPOA when it is perfectly clear that it has no intention whatever to do so. The continued efforts to engage with Iran and go the extra mile may be laudable, but, frankly, seem increasingly futile. Iran clearly regards the west as weak and is almost openly laughing at us.

A new course is called for. Consideration should be given to whether seeking to adhere to the JCPOA as the basis for our future dealings with Iran is realistic or sensible. Rather than clinging to vain hopes that Iran is capable of mending its ways and responding to the IAEA’s censure, the UK should work with the United States and other international partners to refer Iran to the UN Security Council with a view to reinstating the six sanctions-imposing resolutions that were suspended with the JCPOA’s initial implementation.

Iran must learn that flouting the JCPOA has real consequences, and the west should unite to apply the most intense pressure possible on Iran to wind up its nuclear programme, since it is now abundantly clear that it is not for any peaceful purpose, but is aggressive. Quite simply, Iran is a rogue state, and a rogue state in possession of nuclear weapons is not a prospect that the west can happily contemplate or, indeed, tolerate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for this debate—it has certainly been a long time coming—on an issue of concern to many of us in this House. I pay tribute to him for his efforts in securing it. The contributions of all Members have been not only well reasoned but very constructive. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) raised issues that perhaps we do not all agree with, but it is important for us to consider them as part of today’s discussion.

The spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran has been looming for several years, and it presents a profound threat to our collective way of life. Only last night I gave a speech to the National Jewish Assembly, where I was asked at what point the United Kingdom would step in to stop the emergence of a nuclear Iran. I have to say that, if we fail to take action now, our later options will be a lot more extreme. The moment to take the appropriate action, under the JCPOA, is now.

It is almost unthinkable that the world’s greatest sponsor of state terrorism could be on the nuclear threshold, but that is the reality. Two of today’s speakers have mentioned Ahmadinejad saying that he would like to wipe Israel off the map, which could be taken in two ways. I think he was being provocative while at the same time speaking politically. The issue of the JCPOA and a nuclear Iran is not about Israel and Iran. It is not even about Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. It is about the Twelver Muslims, who have a different ideology and view of the world, which they would like to see adopted by other Muslim countries, and they would certainly like to see it in the western hemisphere as well.

This fundamentalist regime is responsible for the most heinous human rights abuses, both at home in Iran and, indeed, abroad. It is a regime that is committed to exporting violent ideology across the world, that has reneged on repeated commitments to the international community, and that has been found guilty in European courts of orchestrating terrorist events. I have mentioned previously that those terrorist events included the possibility of five parliamentarians—two of us are sitting here today—being subject to the violence and destruction orchestrated and founded by Tehran.

The entire integrity of the JCPOA and its ability to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been called into question by several of us for many years. Originally, we were concerned that there were no clauses in the JCPOA requiring Iran to stop transferring funds to terrorist proxies. It certainly did not seek an end to domestic human rights abuses in the country, or to end the testing of the ballistic missile programme. Those were all structural weaknesses of the JCPOA and we were very concerned about that.

It is not just centre-right politicians in the United Kingdom and the United States who are concerned about this issue. Senator Robert Menendez, the Democrat chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, recently questioned why his own Administration were trying to return to the JCPOA when it was

“not sufficient in the first place—and still doesn’t address some of the most serious national security concerns we have.”

He is by no means alone in reaching such a conclusion.

It is an inescapable reality that Iran’s systematic non-compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal has rendered it dead, despite the efforts of the US and the E3 to resuscitate it. Yet all the available evidence suggests that the E3 and the US remain committed, albeit perhaps forlornly, to desperately resuscitating the 2015 framework. There seems to be no plan B under consideration.

The reported terms of the renewed nuclear agreement make for alarming reading. Not only will it leave much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact; it will also receive enormous sanctions relief. It is clear that this will again fail to provide a long-term, sustainable answer to Iran’s belligerent nuclear actions.

The great risk is that, in the absence of an ambitious, broad and punitive nuclear framework, Iran will become a nuclear-armed state in a matter of years—perhaps just three. Buying time is not a viable strategy for the UK Government. At some point, the international community is likely to be faced with an Iranian regime arming itself with a nuclear weapon. We will have far fewer options in tackling that scenario than we do today.

The lesson that we learned from Iraq is that we do not invade sovereign states without a plan, so our plan must be formed now. If we are to avoid military action of any kind, we must seek an assurance from the Iranians that they will abide with an agreement.

One of the other great weaknesses of the JCPOA was its failure to address Iran’s blatant arming and funding of its terrorist proxies. That led directly to the conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and other parts of the world. That was hard to stomach at the time and we need to address it again today.

We cannot allow funds, resources, men, manpower and money to go into furthering conflicts around the world. That would not only provoke greater incivility but provide more impetus for migration and create evermore refugees in the international community. We would be assisting in that objective, and we must stop it. These terror groups are primed to unleash, at any second, horrific violence against civilian targets across the world, all at the behest of their Iranian paymasters.

In her summing up, will the Minister provide justification for why we appear to be compounding the great mistakes of the previous agreement in 2015? Will she assure us that she is making it a priority to tackle this issue? I join colleagues in asking her to consider proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the very least, we owe that to the British victims of that organisation.

I have previously welcomed the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to

“work night and day to prevent the Iranian regime from ever becoming a nuclear power.”

I hope that she will keep up that commitment, but does the Minister believe that the deal under consideration is truly capable of preventing Iran from getting its hands on the most devastating weapons known to man? In the event of a new JCPOA, can the Minister outline what further steps will be taken to build on what has clearly become a limited and ineffective mechanism?

Time is upon us, and history will judge us for the decisions we make today and on any future agreement. For the safety and security of not only the middle east but the wider world, we must do the right thing. That may be a hard decision, and it may be a difficult process, but failure to do so could ultimately lead to greater conflict.