Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: Iran

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Crabb]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is entirely correct. The truth is that the situation has moved on at some pace in the 10 months since we last debated this subject, which is why it is so timely to bring it back to the House this afternoon. It is an uncomfortable truth that Iran can now be described as a threshold nuclear weapons state. The regime is enriching uranium to greater purities than ever before; it is in retention of ballistic missiles that can deliver nuclear and conventional payloads; and it continues to impede the International Atomic Energy Agency’s access to sites, personnel, and even monitoring equipment and data. The director general of the IAEA has spoken about this very subject today. That has far-reaching and serious consequences for UK foreign policy, for our national interests and for international peace and security. Given Iran’s well-documented systematic non-compliance with JCPOA, it is unsurprising that there is widespread apprehension about the future of the nuclear deal. Make no mistake, the reason that talks have stalled is that Tehran prefers to build more leverage through its nuclear violations.

While much of the focus of commentators on the JCPOA talks in Vienna has been on the intentions of the Biden Administration and the actions of Tehran, questions need to be asked now about whether the JCPOA is even capable of addressing the realities of Iran’s nuclear programme in 2021. Accordingly, I believe it is essential that the UK works with international partners to utilise the remaining diplomatic levers available to curtail Tehran’s nuclear belligerence before the situation deteriorates even further.

Aside from Iran’s continuing nuclear violations over the past year, it is worth pointing out that Iran has also engaged in a shadow bombing campaign against oil tankers navigating international waters, with one such attack involving the killing of a British national. Iran and its network of Shi’ite ally militia groups have routinely attacked military personnel in Iraq with dozens of drone and missile strikes, again killing a UK serviceperson. Iran has plotted the kidnap of foreign nationals and continues to hold British citizens and dual nationals hostage. An Iranian diplomat was sentenced in February for his involvement in a bomb plot against an Iranian opposition rally in Paris, which was attended by a number of our colleagues from this place, including Sir David Amess. Mercifully, that attack was foiled just in time.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the original purpose of the nuclear agreement that the west made with Iran was that it would reduce Iranian terrorism around the world and ensure that Iran moved towards becoming a democratic state? We were told at the time that those would be the beneficial effects of the agreement, but none of those things has happened. In fact, terrorism, particularly around the middle east, has got worse, funded and sponsored by Iran.

[Stephen Crabb]

My right hon. Friend is correct. The JCPOA has done nothing to dissuade the Iranian regime from conducting those wider activities in the middle east, undermining democratic states and the social and economic order of countries in the region, and sponsoring proxies. Last week, the scenes of street battles that we saw in Beirut raised the distressing possibility of a much-feared civil war in Lebanon. That should serve as a reminder of revolutionary Iran’s legacy. Wherever Iran exerts influence, it destroys the viability of the fragile but sovereign nation states that it preys on by fanning the flames of ethnic, sectarian and political division within each society for its own gain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). I should declare an interest: the Conservative Friends of Israel paid for accommodation at the Conservative party conference, and it will be on the register shortly. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Kurdistan.

It is with depressing predictability that these debates on Iran’s malign activities occur. The contributions of Members have been remarkably consistent. I have long held the belief that Iran can best be described as the Soviet Union of the middle east. I first made that observation in December 2011 and almost a decade later, it rings as true today as it did then. Iran continues to oppress its citizens at home, just as it uses its notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to export violence and instability abroad. Domestically, thousands of Iranians have been executed and hundreds more killed for daring to promote democracy. It is known for financing Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, as well set out by right hon. and hon. Friends and Members.

The JCPOA nuclear deal was presented to the world as a game-changing moment, a new nuclear framework that would restrain Iran’s nuclear programme and lay the ground for a reformed Iran. Far from it: Iran has retreated within itself, terrorism has increased and the dictatorship has continued. Iran appears to be deliberately raising the stakes in a belligerent effort, not only to advance its nuclear capabilities but to strongarm ever greater concessions from the P5+1.

The UK Government have previously likened the JCPOA to a hollow shell and recognised that it has failed to curtail Iran’s nuclear violations. The JCPOA also does not address Iran’s repression of internal minorities such as the Kurds, nor does it address the aggressive and expansionist activities of the state. The hope of western signatories is that the nuclear deal would come to discourage that bad behaviour, which has included missile attacks against Iranian Kurdish parties in the Kurdistan region, as well as support for and direction of the proxy Shia militia forces in Iraq. Under the direction of the late al-Quds leader Qasem Soleimani, that included participation in the violent seizure of Kirkuk on 16 October 2017 following the peaceful independence referendum in September. Of course, the Kurdistan Regional Government support diplomatic relations with all their neighbours, but the Iranian regime cannot be trusted by its own people or the neighbouring countries.

Does the Minister think that the return to the JCPOA framework will alter Iran’s behaviour and does he intend to tackle Iran’s egregious human rights abuses and support for terrorism, which was so mistakenly omitted from the JCPOA? The UK has a proud record of placing human rights at the centre of our foreign policy and sanctions. Why not consider introducing Magnitsky-style sanctions against Iran? I have warned before that a nuclear Iran would not just mean a nuclear Iran; it means a nuclear Hezbollah, a nuclear Hamas and so forth. It sickens me to the stomach that we now stand on the edge of that becoming a reality.