Iranian Nuclear Programme

Pat McFadden Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

Thank you for your chairmanship, Sir David, as we debate a hot topic on a hot day. I pay tribute to my parliamentary neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) for securing this debate. I know that he cares deeply about the middle east and international stability and is hugely concerned about the issue. I also thank the hon. Members for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for their contributions.

The House debated this matter just a couple of weeks ago. I think that this debate might have been intended to reflect on an agreement that had been reached, having been secured before we knew that the deadline for agreement would be put back for a further week from 30 June. The timing of the negotiations may also be affected by deadlines in the United States, because if an agreement is not reached before 10 July the period for Congress to review and debate such an agreement lengthens considerably. I hope the Minister agrees that it is important that negotiation on substance is not sacrificed to timetables set elsewhere.

Before discussing the detail of any agreement, I ask the Minister to outline in his response the basic purpose of such an agreement from the Government’s point of view. The whole point of this process when it began was to test the thesis that Iran has advanced for the past decade or more—namely, that it is pursuing a civil nuclear programme. It denied that it wanted to develop a nuclear bomb. Is the point of the agreement with Iran still based on that notion—that it should facilitate a civil nuclear programme, but prevent a military one?

The Minister may be aware that The Washington Post said recently that

“a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.”

If the ground has been moved in such a fundamental way, that is important. Is the purpose of the agreement to stop the development of military nuclear capability in Iran or merely to suspend and restrict it for a number of years? In other words, is the purpose of the agreement to keep Iran as a nuclear threshold power for the period the agreement lasts? That is the first point I want to address.

Then, of course, there are key issues of detail between the parties. We keep hearing the phrase that a bad deal is worse than no deal, and it is on the key measures that a judgment will be made. There is a lot of detail in the agreement; the Minister will be relieved to hear that I do not want to ask about every part of it. However, there are a few key issues to consider.

First, there is the issue of inspection and verification; whatever is agreed, those elements are absolutely vital. The purpose of agreement on them is that commitments can be verified and that there can be no covert breaking of the terms of the deal. We understand that the International Atomic Energy Agency will be granted access to nuclear sites in Iran, but there is still the important question of military and other sites. Iran has argued that the request for unfettered access to those sites would be a breach of sovereignty that no state would tolerate, but trust is absolutely crucial on this point. On what basis, if any, will inspections of non-nuclear sites be allowed? It is important that the House is aware of the Government’s position on this issue.

Secondly, there is a range of issues around capability, including centrifuges, research and development, and the quantity and quality of enriched uranium. This House can often become very focused when we discuss issues such as the number of centrifuges, but once again the agreement seems to have moved around on this point. There seems to have been an escalation in the number of centrifuges that Iran will be allowed to keep. We have heard figures of 1,500, 2,000, 5,000 and even 6,000.

The fundamental point, however, is not only the number of centrifuges but what it tells us about capability. What will happen to the centrifuges that Iran is allowed to keep in the future? There are centrifuges that Iran currently possesses that will not be included in the agreement, so how will they be monitored? How will we continue to monitor the capability that Iran will have after whatever number of centrifuges is agreed?

On research and development, the agreement seeks to freeze nuclear capacity for 10 years. If the goal is to stop Iran from becoming a military nuclear power, why only 10 years? Why not longer? Is there not a logical flaw in placing a time limit on a capability that Iran denies wanting to have in the first place?

There is also the issue of the enriched uranium that has already been developed. What will happen to it, and how will that be monitored? Also on capability, what of the heavy water plant at Arak, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North referred to, or the other facilities whose existence has only reluctantly and sometimes belatedly been acknowledged by Iran? How will we ensure that the capacity in these facilities to produce plutonium for potential military uses is permanently decommissioned? Can the Minister tell the House what is intended to happen to this capacity under the agreement and how we can ensure that it will be followed through?

The capability issues come together in the concept of breakout time, which my hon. Friend also referred to. That is the time needed for Iran to develop a weapon in the event of the failure of the agreement, and the withdrawal of inspection and monitoring facilities. Can the Minister tell the House what the view of the P5+1 is on the issue of breakout time? Is breakout time a matter of capability, or a matter of time? Have we put a time on it? There has been talk of six months, or a year. My hon. Friend quoted President Obama, who said the period could be even shorter. The issue of breakout time is absolutely crucial to the future of the agreement.

Finally, on the agreement itself there is the issue of sanctions. Iran is at the negotiating table because it wants sanctions to be lifted. Throughout this process, facilities have been discovered whose existence had not been previously admitted; uranium has been enriched beyond the levels needed for civilian use; and Iran has continued to sponsor client groups in the region, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as my hon. Friend pointed out. It is little wonder that in this environment trust is in short supply. Does the Minister agree that calls by Iran for sanctions to be lifted as soon as an agreement is signed should be resisted? If an agreement is reached, would it not be much more appropriate for there to be a phased lifting of sanctions alongside verifiable compliance by Iran with the commitments it has made under the agreement?

Of course, there are advantages for the world if Iran co-operates with the rest of the world, but that co-operation cannot simply be taken on trust. Trust has to be built and earned, and that means a phased rather than an immediate lifting of sanctions. On the sanctions point, of course, there is the concept of “snapback”, as President Obama has put it. What arrangements will be put in place for sanctions to be restored quickly if Iran does not adhere to the commitments it has made?

A good agreement with Iran, which prevents an escalation to nuclear military capability and brings it more into the international community, would be a good thing. But a bad agreement, which was either not capable of being properly enforced or which simply delayed capability for a few years as a trade-off for the lifting of sanctions, would be a bad deal for the P5+1, the region and the world.

I would like the Minister to tell the House what the process will be here in Parliament to examine an agreement, if one is reached. We debate here—Westminster Hall is not exactly crowded today—but this issue is fundamental for our security. What will be the parliamentary process for considering an agreement if one is reached in the coming days?

To conclude, it is impossible to discuss this matter without considering it in the context of Iran’s wider role in the middle east. What are the implications of an agreement for the sponsorship of proxies, which Iran continues to engage in, and for Iran’s wider regional struggle with Saudi Arabia? The Minister will be aware of the statement from Prince Turki al-Faisal, which was quoted by my hon. Friend. The prince said:

“Whatever the Iranians have, we will have too.”

If that is the case, what would this agreement mean for nuclear capability in the rest of the region and, equally importantly, what would be the implications of a failure to reach agreement? If the west is to lift sanctions as a result of the agreement, how do we also influence Iran’s wider role in the region? How do we give assurance to other allies in the middle east, who fear a more assertive Iran and that the agreement will not constrain and influence Iran but simply empower it through the lifting of sanctions?

This discussion is not only about the technicalities of centrifuges, inspections and quantities of yellowcake; it is also about whether Iran is really serious about adopting a different role in the region, and a wider role than the one it has pursued in recent years. The rhetoric that comes from the top of the regime continues to be belligerent, to call for the annihilation of the state of Israel and to cause huge concern, even among our non-Israeli allies in the region. If we get an agreement, it is important not only that it is the right one in terms of security, but that it has a positive effect on the wider issues in the middle east.