Iran: Nuclear Issues — House of Commons, 2015-11-24
Topic: International Affairs
William Nigel Paul Cash (Conservative, Centre-right): This is the first opportunity we have had to put the point about the timing to the Minister. It is because we recommended it for debate that we can raise the question in this context. On the logjam of documents, to which the hon. Gentleman, who sits on my Committee, rightly refers, it is the constant and persistent determination of the Committee to get issues debated as early as possible, as he knows. I will not go down that route now—it is for another occasion—but I take very seriously what he says Because this is such a controversial matter, others have made observations on it, and I would like to quote what Roger Boyes, the diplomatic editor of The Times, said on 15 July. The Minister might think that circumstances have improved since then in terms of bringing Iran and Russia nearer to the negotiations and getting a better result in respect of ISIS/Daesh, but I will quote what he said anyway, because it is of some interest. He says: "There is nothing game-changing about teaming up with a wobbly Iran. The accord with Tehran can then only be judged narrowly as to whether it is a success as a piece of arms control statecraft—and whether the release of sanctioned funds makes Iran more or less menacing. Consider what would happen without a nuclear deal, President Obama said yesterday: no limits on the nuclear programme, on centrifuges, on the plutonium reactor. But the president has to consider this too: how does one maintain leverage on Iran once the sanctions have been lifted? Denied access to a suspicious nuclear site, inspectors will be able to appeal to a joint commission that includes delegates from Iran, Russia and China. Delays are thus built into the verification system and the idea that sanctions can come crashing quickly down again is over-optimistic. Parts of the deal read like a cheater’s charter; there is too much wriggle room." I put that forward not in my own name, but because I think it important for the House to hear the views of an experienced diplomatic editor such as Roger Boyes. He continues: "What happens in ten to 15 years when the deal has run its course, restraints are lifted and a wealthy Iran which has retained its nuclear expertise, which has grown in zealous confidence, decides to remind a small Gulf state who is boss? The deal is an open invitation to Sunni princelings to invest in their own nuclear deterrent. In the meantime Tehran will have the money to throw into the subversion of its neighbours and expand its arms exporting business." On the other hand, to illustrate the controversy and importance of all this, Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran who obviously knows a lot about it, argued that there were good reasons to believe that it will stick, including "the ‘snap-back’ provisions to restore sanctions in the event of violations" and the fact that "Iran will not want to risk a military attack, which would grow more likely if the deal fell through; no viable better agreement available and no international support for more sanctions if the US were seen to have vetoed the deal" Then there would be an Iran, he says, that "is tired of being punished for something that it has not intended to do since the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s ban on nuclear weapons, which dates from 2003, the year Saddam Hussein was toppled." He goes on to say that Iran "has recognised that it cannot develop sustainably as a nation without allaying international concerns." It also "values its reputation", and "reneging on its commitment not to build nuclear weapons, or withdrawing its agreement to the utmost transparency, either during or after the agreed 15-year limits on its enrichment activities" would "demolish that reputation, with no appreciable gain to its security because of the retaliation and regional arms race that would follow." That just gives an indication and a flavour of the complexity and controversy that lies behind all this.