Iran

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are keeping our focus on that. I pay tribute to him for keeping his focus—relentlessly—in his questions in Parliament, but we are also keeping our focus and continuing our work to bring the conference together. If we can carry our success on this agreement through to the success of a comprehensive and final settlement, it will be a big advance towards what he has been campaigning for and remove more of the excuses of other nations against such discussions. I think, therefore, that he can view this as a step forward in that regard.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Many people regard Iran as the Soviet Union of the middle east, because it practises repression at home, it exports terrorism abroad and it says it wants to wipe Israel off the map. How will my right hon. Friend judge whether this is genuine perestroika and glasnost or whether it is deception by Iran, and what steps can he take to ensure that over the six months it not only stops work on nuclear enrichment, but stops supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend raises a wide range of wholly legitimate issues. We have many differences with Iran, including on many of those issues and on its appalling human rights record. This agreement does not make any of those differences go away. I do not want to mislead the House. The agreement does not mean there is necessarily a change in its other policies, but it must be judged on its own merits and on whether it is operated in good faith and succeeds in dealing with the nuclear issue. Of course, however, we will use the opportunity for dialogue with Iran to raise the sorts of issues he describes.