Britain-Iran Relations

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Hanson; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) on securing this debate. She mentioned that she is the first person with Iranian heritage to be elected to the House; I am the first MP from the council estate of Castlemilk, but her heritage is perhaps slightly more exotic than mine.

At the outset, I must say that I thought the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made an excellent speech. I did not buy all of it, but I thought he struck a very good balance. It is undoubtedly a good thing that we are now in a position to have these positive discussions with Iran. Indeed, I welcome the developments that have brought us to this point and I invite the House to reflect on a fact that I had hoped I could make mine, but it was stolen by the hon. Gentleman—namely, that the current President of Iran was educated at university in Glasgow. It was at Glasgow Caledonian University, as opposed to Glasgow University; I say that just to correct the record.

I have listened with interest to the contributions that have been made. Indeed, I share some of the optimism that some people feel that we are moving in the right direction, but I also think we have to pause for thought. The nuclear deal is to be celebrated; I observe that it has been one of the Government’s few foreign policy successes. In fact, I recall that, as a new Member, I attended the Foreign Office briefing for new MPs, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), who was then the Foreign Secretary, had just flown in from the talks about the nuclear deal. He then briefed us on his departmental responsibilities. However, progress is required in many other areas—some of which have already been outlined by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and other hon. Members—before we should be too enthusiastic about entering into a commercial embrace with Iran.

Members have stated correctly the need for consistency. Indeed, the hon. Member for Strangford and I have been consistent in speaking out against human rights abuses in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which has been mentioned several times this morning. That consistency requires us to do the same when it comes to Iran. Should we be so comfortable about embracing a country that is part of a tangled web of complex relationships that are causing so many problems around the world and in fact are working in direct opposition to our own foreign policy objectives? I am not suggesting we cut all ties and walk away, but the relationship has to be thought through and balanced.

We have to consider what Iran’s relationships with some of its proxies in the middle east mean for that strategy—its relationship with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad Government in Syria. What those relationships represent is not good for peace in the middle east. In fact, they undermine some of our own objectives in the middle east. If we get the strategy wrong, we risk a very dangerous outcome.

From my knowledge and interest in UK-Saudi affairs, I would say it is imperative that, before we embark on a full commercial relationship with the Iranian regime—let us not doubt for a moment that that many of these businesses will be closely linked to the Iranian deep state—we do not allow it to reach the stage that it has with Saudi Arabia, where commercial considerations trump good foreign policy making.

What of the human rights record in Iran, much of which was brilliantly outlined by the hon. Member for Strangford? Although in some respects it is not quite as medieval as Saudi Arabia, there are enormously alarming cases that should cause us to pause for thought, such as the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, which has been mentioned several times in the House. She is a British-Iranian citizen who has been subjected to 45 days of solitary confinement, denied legal representation and subsequently sentenced after a secret trial to five years in prison on unspecified national security charges. This is one of numerous cases of the Iranian authorities imprisoning dual nationals, which they do not even recognise, on unspecified charges.

I listened to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) with an open mind, and I listened with interest to his description of visiting Iran. Perhaps when he returns he can ask to visit the notorious Evin detention centre, which is well known for housing political prisoners, intellectuals and academics, many of whom we have celebrated here this morning.

The case of Salman Rushdie, a personal hero of mine and one of the world’s most celebrated essayists and novelists, is more widely known. He has spent a large chunk of his adult life in hiding in this country with a death sentence hanging over his head because the Iranian Government did not like some words he had written in “The Satanic Verses”. The hon. Member for South Ribble opened her remarks by talking about the importance of celebrating poetry and cultural links with Iran. Perhaps if we had had some of that at the time of the publication of his book, Mr Rushdie would have been a free man for longer than he has been allowed to be.

Members may have thought that the case of Mr Rushdie had almost died and gone away, but as recently as this year the Iranian state media added $600,000 dollars to the existing cash that was offered for the killing of Mr Rushdie, one of the finest advocates for free speech that this country has ever been home to.

I am pleased that our diplomatic relations have been upgraded, but that did not happen overnight. The Minister, his Department and several of our allies applied themselves over a long period of time, often when it seemed hopeless and when entrenched interests tried to veto progress, to achieve the circumstances that brought us the nuclear deal, resulting in the change in diplomatic relations. It shows what can be achieved when there is political will to achieve progress in relations with hitherto hostile states.

I appeal to the House—perhaps not the hon. Member for South Ribble who secured this debate, because of her own personal experience—not to be so naive and idealistic as to think that we have reached a point where trade relations can be normal with Iran. If a price is to be put on UK-Iranian relations, let it be calculated in progress on human rights and a foreign policy that does not continue to undermine our own interests in the middle east.