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Iran

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I would agree with the latter suggestion. The supreme leader recently made an exception to his rule and met President Putin. Although President Ahmadinejad may feel undermined—we must remember that he came to power on a wave of nationalism and cheap shots—the supreme leader has realised that his strategy has failed. Iran has been weakened, and it has not made any friends in the middle east. The arguments between Egypt and Iran over the Hamas-Gaza problem demonstrate that Iran has become less popular in the middle east than it was at the start of the presidency. The supreme leader is the one who can move things forward. I do not think that his position would be weakened hugely if he made such an attempt. Of course, Iran can always say no afterwards. It is the preconditions to engagement that have often held up talks—the requirement that Iran suspend its nuclear programme before talks, that kind of thing—and they do not move the process on. I am hopeful and optimistic, but I do not underestimate the threat to Israel from Iran. I am not trying to say that it is all a bed of roses, or that the threat is a fiction—it certainly is not. There is a threat to Israel from Iran, and we have to deal with it in short time, before Israel exercises its right of self-defence.