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Defence in the World

The situation may not be as simple as the right hon. Gentleman portrays it when we consider what President Ahmadinejad has said—his open declaration that he wants to"““wipe Israel off the map””." That attitude is not prevalent in any other nuclear weapons state. The right hon. Gentleman may correct me, but I know of no such state that has openly said it wants to use its nuclear arsenal in an aggressive way. The Iranian regime wants to do that. In the UK we are discussing the next generation of our nuclear deterrent, but with fewer warheads than we have at present. We are within the letter and the spirit of the non-proliferation treaty. Iran, too, has obligations under the treaty. We cannot accept one country breaking out of the treaty—especially when it has a regime such as the current one in Iran—and do nothing about it. Iran is threatening not only to possess nuclear weapons, but, for the first time, designating the target for them. That is an extraordinarily disturbing development.