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Iran (External Involvement)

Thank you very much, Mr. O’Hara, for the opportunity to reply on behalf of my party. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) on introducing the debate with his central theme—that Iranian weaponry is helping to kill and injure British service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan now, as shown by the quotation from a serving lieutenant-colonel that we are in an undeclared war with Iran. The debate has been short but useful, and parliamentary colleagues have either kept to my hon. Friend’s theme or gone off at tangents. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) spoke passionately about his belief that the British Government need to recognise or not, one way or the other, the role of the PMOI and highlight the lack of any real civil liberties in Iran. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) spoke eloquently about the fact that we frequently address the Iranian problem in a completely unsophisticated way. We should recognise that Iran is a large regional power and that we need to use a wide range of diplomatic as well as economic and military levers if we are to have any hope of persuading Iran not to go down the path that it is currently on. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) identified a series of issues connected with Iran, not least its threat to the wider region. In the limited time available to me, I wish first to ask what we know about Iran, addressing the central question that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark put. I shall give three short quotations. The first is from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, on 11 January 2007. His view, and that of the United States Government, was that"““Iran regards its ability to conduct terrorist operations abroad as a key element of its national security strategy: it considers this capability as helping to safeguard the regime by deterring U.S. or Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, enhancing Iran’s regional influence through intimidation, and helping to drive the U.S. from the region.””" The Foreign Secretary, at Foreign Office questions on 20 March, said:"““We have long-standing concerns about Iran’s support for terrorism. We assess that Iran continues to fund and arm extremist groups engaged in violence in Iraq. It remains a leading supplier of military and financial assistance to Lebanese Hezbollah, and it funds and retains close links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.””—[Official Report, 20 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 663.]" Finally, the Prime Minister, in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee on 8 February 2005—two years ago—said that Iran"““certainly does sponsor terrorism, there’s no doubt about that at all.””" That is clearly the view of the United States and British Governments. That is fine, but the question must surely then be what we are going to do about it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark asked—it may be unfair that the question is being asked of a Foreign Office Minister, as it should be put to a Defence Minister—what has the Ministry of Defence done about force protection in Iraq and Afghanistan? By that I mean how does it stop indirect Iranian attacks upon not just British but Iraqi and Afghan troops, which are the troops of the legitimate Governments? My second point should also be made to an MOD Minister. Under successive Governments, we have failed to put enough money into protecting our military personnel and their vehicles against the munitions that come in, as other countries, both America and Israel, have done. But what do we not know? That is the Rumsfeld question. We are never absolutely sure who in Iran is directing policy at any given stage. My own conclusion is that we are dealing with a regime rather like the French revolutionary regime in the early 1790s—a complex series of coalitions of one kind or another. It sometimes suits them that we in the west, and for that matter their own neighbours, are never 100 per cent. sure how to deal with them. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said in their presentation yesterday, we need to up our game in dealing with Iran. I do not believe that it is an either/or; it is perfectly legitimate for us to have discussions and conversations with regimes that we do not like. Ultimately, if they are a threat to international security and our security, we can end all diplomatic relations, which can lead to all kinds of other things. We have not reached that stage yet, but we need to up our game through a combination of incentives and penalties. The Iranians play hard-ball international politics, and I agree with my hon. Friends who have said that, in information policy, the United States of America and ourselves, who are supposed to have such a sophisticated approach, have all too often been caught on the back foot. We should also bear in mind that the Iranian regime has not liked being placed in the international dock. It never believed that its nuclear programme would get as far as the Security Council position that has been taken in the past few months. The Iranian Government are capable of making the most horrendous mistakes. After all, the Russians have bent over backwards to help the Iranians at every possible opportunity. Usually, the Iranians have been stupid enough to spurn the Russians, so the Russians have finally fallen in behind the United Nations. We now need to link the attitude of the Iranians to their nuclear programme with their sponsorship of terrorism. The Government must not only make it clear to them that we are taking the matter very seriously and intend to publicise every possible detail of their links with terrorism, but work even harder to persuade our allies, particularly in the European Union, that the issue is of outstanding importance. There is no quick fix and no final military solution, but I disagree with the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter). As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made clear, we can never take the military option off the table in international diplomacy, because it is something that can ultimately be done through the United Nations. We should not remove that option, and the Iranians should be made well aware that, if they continue to defy the international community and a series of sanctions and UN resolutions are gone through, the international community might ultimately decide to institute a series of military options. That might not happen, but we should not say that we will take the option off the table. No sovereign country will ever say, in dealing with another country, that there is not a military option if it feels that there is a threat. That is not to say that we advocate it, but we must make it clear to the Iranians that a range of diplomatic and military tools are available and that they are in the dock and we are not. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newark for introducing the debate, and, as always, I look forward with pleasure to the Minister’s response. I am happy that he is still in his place during this sensitive time of regime change. Like the Roman empire, we have an emperor of the east and an emperor of the west, and the Minister may or may not survive. Perhaps the Department for Work and Pensions will beckon in a month’s time. I look forward to hearing his reply.