Britain-Iran Relations

Debate between Richard Bacon and Gregory Campbell

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) on securing the debate; I know she is passionate about this subject. When I was elected to Parliament, I never expected that years later I would have the opportunity to introduce her to the Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr Zarif, as I did earlier this year, and that she would say “This is the happiest day since I was elected.”

It is hard to think of a subject on which there is more ignorance than Iran and our relations with it. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for whom I have a lot of respect, spoke articulately about the persecution of Christians. When I went to the World Against Violence and Extremism conference 18 months ago, which was organised by the President of the Republic, I was surprised to be the only British person there apart from my translator, who is British-Iranian and British-born but speaks Farsi. There was a former Prime Minister of Norway; the former President Zardari, the widower of Benazir, from Pakistan; and the former Anglican Bishop of Washington, a Catholic cardinal, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and various others from the United States. I said to our Iranian hosts, “You should target those in the United States Congress who speak out most against you and get them to come here and see what a normal country Iran actually is.”

I ended up becoming chair of the all-party group on Iran slightly by accident, when my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace) became a member of the Government and asked me if I would do it. The reason I got involved in the group was that four years ago, in 2012, it was seriously said that this country might consider attacking Iran with bombs. I was a Member of Parliament in 2003 when we attacked Iraq, and I voted against it. The arguments made in 2012 sounded eerily familiar to me. I decided that I was not going to trust anyone else’s opinion, so I went to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, met the nuclear inspectors who were going to Iran, heard what they had to say and wrote it down in a hardback book, which I still have. They said, “We have no evidence of nuclear weapons-grade material.” It is also worth recalling that Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, which various other countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel are not.

The real ignorance, though, stems from something else. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble pointed out, our history with Iran goes back for several centuries. Relatively little of that history, particularly over the past 100 years, reflects well on this country. There are a lot of reasons, many of them good ones, why the Iranians have been very prickly towards us.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on what he said about his attendance at the conference. I have no doubt whatever that it would be a good thing for more people to go to Iran and see what type of country it is. However, he said that Iran could be seen as a normal country.

[Mr Bacon]

Yes.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

Presumably he will take the opportunity to rectify that comment in the light of the litany of instances of persecution of Christians in that country.

[Mr Bacon]

No. There is persecution throughout the world. Many people think that abortion is a fundamental human right and that for a country to make it illegal is not normal. I happen to disagree with them, but the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Strangford represent constituencies in which abortion is still illegal. I think that is a decision for local people to make locally, but what constitutes “normal” is actually a very wide spectrum.

The key point that needs to be understood is that after 9/11, while much of the middle east was yodelling in the street at the destruction of the twin towers and the murder of many thousands of people, including many Muslims, Iran flew its flags at half mast, held candlelit vigils and offered the United States strategic and logistical help in the fight against the Taliban, which was accepted,.

I hope the hon. Member for Strangford, as a serious religious man, will listen carefully to this: what is least understood about all these imbroglios, and indeed about what is going on in Syria, is that to the Taliban, al-Qaeda and now Daesh, the first enemy is not the west and not Christians but the Shi’a. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Iranians are supporting the Shi’a in Syria, or that the Iranians were opposed to the Taliban who wanted to kill the Shi’a. It should come as no surprise that the Iranians were deeply opposed to al-Qaeda, which particularly attacks the Shi’a.