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Iran

My Lords, of course it does not. On the other hand, to try to discuss Iran without context, whether cultural, historic or regional, is a recipe for coming to the wrong conclusions. I have been back to Iran a number of times in recent years, including the visit by the parliamentary group in 2000—the first since the revolution. As president of the British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, I returned there in 2004, trying to drum up an effective exchange of trade between the two countries. No one has mentioned that. We have good trade with Iran; it is too imbalanced for its good health, in that we export 10 times more to Iran than we import, but it is not insignificant to consider the role of trade in bringing about rapprochement, supporting progressive forces in that country and generally defusing heightened tensions. I strongly argue for that. I have a strong affection and admiration for Iran and its people, tempered with, I hope, an open-minded criticality of those aspects that are unacceptable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, scarcely needed to point out. Human rights are the most obvious, because the West and this country particularly espouse and value them. I do not defend Iran’s record on human rights—I spoke recently to Amnesty and have done so over the years. Its view on Iran is that human rights are generally improving, but in the past year or so it has gone backwards—not to the position that it was once in, as was characterised during the early revolutionary days, but backwards none the less. I should put in context the fact that there are fewer executions in Iran in a year than there are in the United States. We should think about that. Some noble Lords have said that there is no democracy in Iran, including the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. That is simply not true. While democracy in Iran is not perfect by our standards, it is more effective than in any surrounding country—countries that are often supported without equivocation by the United States. Iran has elections; we heard about the boycott—well, fewer electors boycotted the recent Iranian elections than boycotted our recent general election. Of course there is gerrymandering of the lists and there is no defence for that; but pretending that Iran is not on the road to the democracy that we would all wish it to have is idle and misleading. I should remind those who want to bring back the PMOI, give it support and let it loose that it was harboured, supported and sustained by Saddam Hussein—scarcely the most benign of patrons. The idea that we could do that and encourage regime change in a way that will really bring about that for which we devoutly hope—a fully democratic Iran in which human rights are fully respected—is pie in the sky and a dangerous illusion. I also wish to comment on what my noble friend Lady Williams said about the Iran-Iraq war. You cannot come near an understanding of the chemistry of Iran today unless you appreciate how it feels and felt about that war. It was as recently as 16 to 18 years ago that we in the West—we, too, supplied arms to Saddam—supported that ghastly man in his land grab against Iran. Try to put the boot on the other foot. What if Iran had supported a country that had tried to take, say, part of our territorial rights a mere 18 years ago and, as my noble friend Lady Williams said, we had lost a million people, killed or seriously wounded? It is not good enough to pretend that we now have the moral authority to tell the Iranians what to do and how to run their country. In my remaining minute, I would like to look forward, because the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was spot on. First, I praise Jack Straw. His performance as Foreign Secretary has been impeccable. He has tried his level best to support progressive forces within Iran and is still doing so—as are the EU3. I would powerfully resist any attempt at military intervention or sanctions. We are a long way from sanctions, because the moment that we impose them is the moment that we drive Iran ever more into the solidarity that it possesses as greatly as any nation on earth. It is a proud country and you will bring all their forces together if you do that. The Americans have had sanctions for 25 years and much good it has done the Iranian progressives. The ““axis of evil”” speech by President Bush threw power away from the progressives and made President Khatami’s attempts at rapprochement with the West nugatory. Nuclear demilitarisation of the Middle East is essential if we are to stop Iran trying, as it may be, to obtain nuclear arms. We can do that only in the context of the absolute guarantee of the territorial integrity of Israel. That will mean America, us and the EU giving Israel that assurance so that it can abandon its nuclear weaponry. With that there would be a prospect of getting Iran to do the right thing in nuclear terms. I also commend the notion of a UN-ensured supply of enriched uranium so that Iran can be assured of obtaining that commodity, which is essential for its peaceful nuclear generation programme.