---

Global Security (Iran)

Yes, I do agree, but I also think that we need to be careful. The situation that the hon. Gentleman has described is appalling. Iran executes more people per head of population than any other country in the world, and carries out more executions than any country except China. People are still stoned to death and there is a criminal code that is used in a most brutal and repressive way—that was discussed in yesterday's debate, so I shall not go into it now. The regime has tried to portray the problems that it is now confronting as having somehow been created by international forces or by people internally who are in league with international forces. Ayatollah Khamenei has been quoted as saying:""The diplomats who have talked to us with courtesy up to now have in the past few days taken the masks away from their faces and are showing their true image"." He has referred to western countries as "hungry wolves" and said:""They are showing their true enmity towards the Iranian Islamic state and the most evil of them is the British government."" Britain's relations with Iran have a long history, and some have been quite difficult. Anyone who watched BBC4 over the weekend may have seen its four hours of programmes about Iran, which included some interesting stories about what was happening there in 1909, about the role of British oil companies and about the British Government's encouragement and support for the coup against the democratically elected Mossaddeq Government in the 1950s. But none of that excuses the systematic harassment of people who work for the British Government in Iran, or the arrests of nine locally employed Iranian members of the British embassy staff. None of it justifies the expulsion of two British diplomats, or the expulsion of the BBC correspondent in Iran.