---

Prevention of Nuclear Proliferation

In this brief debate, we should think very carefully about the long-term implications of the path on which we are apparently setting out today. I recognise much of what was said by the hon. Members for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace) about human rights abuses in Iran. I draw attention to early-day motion 2526 concerning trade unionists in Iran, and there are human rights abuses against people of the Baha'i faith, Kurdish people and others. I am extremely well aware of the abuse of human rights that takes place in Iran and of the determination of many people, including working-class people, trade unionists and intellectuals, to do something about their society and to take part in that political debate. We should recognise that a lively, if robust and sometimes very dangerous, political debate is going on in Iran. We should also think carefully about the rhetoric we use when we talk about Iran. Iran is an inheritor of the Persian tradition, a place of enormous civilisation and culture, and a place of enormous unity when faced with an external threat, as my Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) pointed out. We should not denigrate the whole history of the Persian people and the contribution that they have made to history while ignoring our own scandalous role in their history, from the attempts at exploiting oil, which eventually led to the formation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which became BP, through to the coup in 1952 inspired by the British and the CIA. We do not have clean hands in the history of Iran, and we should have some humility when dealing with the situation there.