Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I join the congratulations to my noble friend Lord Polak on securing this debate. It is always daunting and an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Of course, I always listen to my noble friend Lord Lamont with respect and interest.

Despite Biden’s presidential campaign commitment, there have been few indications that the US and other JCPOA signatories aim to open up a second negotiating track following what are called the “regional issues”, which are essentially Iranian support for regional terrorism, and its ballistic missile development and diffusion. There have been few indications of support for opening this track by the E3 European signatories, including the UK. The UK must use its leverage with the Biden Administration, following their commitment to return to the JCPOA, to establish a second negotiating track on regional issues, as the Question suggests.

Iran has been flexing its muscles in breaching the already deeply flawed JCPOA, which it was successful in persuading the West to sign, and has been breaking other resolutions around missile development and terrorism since Obama’s time, but since Biden’s time it has pushed the envelope to the limit. A recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear programme noted that the stock of enriched uranium amassed by Iran in breach of its 2015 nuclear deal is growing to the point that its most highly enriched material is most of the way to a common bomb yardstick. The report argues that Iran is in the final stretch of producing the material needed for a weapon. Its stock of uranium enriched up to 60% fissile purity has almost doubled to 33.2 kg. A senior diplomat said that that is around three-quarters of the amount needed, if enriched further, for a nuclear bomb, according to the definition of a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA has found particles of processed uranium at three apparently old sites that Iran never declared. The agency has been seeking answers from Iran but has repeatedly said that Tehran has not provided satisfactory answers. Iran wants the IAEA investigation ended as part of an agreement, but western powers have argued that the issue is beyond the scope of the 2015 deal, to which, of course, the IAEA is not a party. Iran has been very cunning. Its facilities are geographically distributed and often underground, so are very hard to destroy.

Meanwhile, Iran is the founder and primary political, military and financial backer of Hezbollah, a UK-proscribed Shia terrorist organisation based in Lebanon. It has evolved into a hybrid organisation carrying out international terrorist attacks and regional military operations. Iran has provided Hezbollah with hundreds of millions of dollars in support, as well as military resources. Hezbollah is believed to possess as many as 150,000 missiles—10 times its capacity during the 2006 war with Israel. I declare for the record that I am a member of the APPG on Israel.

In Gaza, Iran has long financially and politically backed terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Its support has increased in recent months, including its provision of weapons and military know-how. As recently as January 2021, the IRGC Aerospace Force commander, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, stated:

“All the missiles you might see in Gaza and Lebanon were created with Iran’s support.”


Thanks to Iran’s technological support, Gaza’s terrorists were able to use more advanced weaponry, including long-range rockets, heavier warheads and drone technology.

The UK should use its leverage with the US to press for a second negotiating track with Iran on these regional issues. Having supported the Biden Administration’s efforts, against some people’s better judgments, to revive the JCPOA, the UK is well placed to discuss with the US establishing a second track of negotiations to end Iran’s regional destabilisation immediately following the conclusion of JCPOA negotiations.

Finally, as has been mentioned, Iran continues to insist that the IRGC be delisted as a foreign terrorist organisation in the United States. The UK Government have not revealed their intention with regard to the UK’s listing of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. The UK’s integrated review—a landmark document setting out the UK’s role in the world—noted Iran as a primary threat to global peace and security. Given that the IRGC meets all the criteria for proscription set out in the Terrorism Act 2000, I say to the Minister that now should be the time for the UK to undertake proscription of the IRGC and to urge the US not to delist it.

Israel and Gaza

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the right reverend Prelate and have already indicated what the sustainable solution is, which is clear and in front of us. It goes back to the importance of a viable two-state solution, which the Government have repeatedly stated. On the points he made about the importance of Jerusalem and other holy places across the Holy Land, speaking as a Muslim who has visited Israel—Jerusalem and other holy sites—I say that we have been enriched by the essence of faith, the Abrahamic faiths, which bring people together. The faith community has had an important role to play in the healing, reconciliation and building through progressive steps towards the two-state solution.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it looks like a ceasefire is imminent, but that is not the issue now. This conflict was completely unprovoked and started by Hamas terrorists for pure political expediency at a horrific and terrible cost, not least to their own people. Does my noble friend agree with me that the issue now is that we ensure that Hamas cannot and does not call this conflict a win in any way, and that it does not get access to more lethal and dangerous arms, as it will undoubtedly seek to, from countries such as Iran?

International Human Rights Day

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

At this juncture, I have to say, I totally agree with the noble and learned Lord. We are proud of our traditions in this respect.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

On 2 December, the UN General Assembly once again neglected the human rights repression by serial abusers such as Iran, China and Russia and devoted an entire session to deriding Israel. The five resolutions voted on in that session are yet more distractions from tragedies unfolding in many countries but, unlike Canada and our other allies, the UK voted against only one of them. Does the Minister agree that it is time for the UK to stand up not just against item 7 but against oppressive regimes by introducing resolutions that condemn human rights abuses?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend that we need to consider and show leadership on resolutions against repressive regimes. He is right to raise the issue of the Human Rights Council and item 7. We have seen an incremental change and I feel very strongly on a personal level that resolutions, particularly those of a technical nature, need to be looked at. This is not just about creating bureaucracy; it is about creating effective change on the ground. We must hold regimes, wherever they are in the world, that are repressive towards human rights to account and make sure that the perpetrators of crimes are brought to justice.

Israel and Palestine: United States’ Proposals for Peace

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, it is always an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, on securing this debate. I refer your Lordships to my non-financial interests, as disclosed in the register. The noble Baroness certainly has an interest in the Jewish state; I notice that she has asked some 197 parliamentary Written Questions of the Government on Israel in the last 12 months. I am not sure if that is a record. It might be.

We meet for this important debate just a few weeks after Auschwitz remembrance and Holocaust Day, with “never again” ringing in our ears. There are now some 6 million Jewish people living in Israel, of whom 172,000 are survivors and witnesses to those terrible events, so I believe we have a moral duty to protect them from the existential threat that they face from some who, to this day, still call for the Jews to be driven into the sea.

The Washington Institute polled West Bankers last month, and two-thirds said that the top Palestinian priority, in the next five years, is to regain control of all historical Palestine, from the river to the sea, rather than permanent peace with Israel. At the same time, it cannot be acceptable to witness the suffering that happens daily in the West Bank, and in particular in Gaza. Political leaders there suppress their own people, inflicting on them a lifetime of misery, depriving them of basic human needs and devoting valuable resources to war, rather than to the peace that the decent people of that region yearn to see and deserve.

It is only one conflict in the world but, if we were to believe the United Nations and the ill-informed press, it is the only one. This unfortunate and incorrect assessment permeates global politics. Even Bill Clinton said that solving the conflict will

“take about half the impetus in the whole world for terror away”.

I doubt it. The atrocities in Syria, Libya, Yemen and even against the Muslim community in China are sidelined as the Middle East and Israel in particular are criticised. Since 2013, Israel has been condemned in 45 resolutions by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Since the creation of the council in 2006, it has almost resolved more resolutions condemning Israel than it has the rest of the world combined. Is Israel really that guilty or is it just an easy target for what Ben-Dror Yemini calls the “red-green alliance”? The green is not environmentalists but those ostensibly fighting for human rights, but actually supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Taliban. By fighting what they see as western imperialism, they end up supporting a terrible form of fascism.

So it falls on someone else to come up with a proposal, as President Trump has done. It is not perfect, as Members of this House have observed. It suffers from not having Palestinian input, but then everyone knew that, whatever was proposed, their leaders would reject it. Such was the case with the Peel plan, the Woodhead Plan, the Bevin plan, the partition plan—which was opposed, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini—right through to Camp David, without even offering a counterproposal. Of course, Ehud Olmert’s peace plan and now the current US proposal have all been rejected, this one before they have even seen it. The consistent lack of leadership from the leaders of the Palestinian people—who, by the way, have no mandate for that title as they were elected 16 years ago on a four-year mandate—is disappointing.

Arabs living in Israel, however, are afraid of becoming Palestinian citizens because they see how those living in the West Bank are subject to human rights violations on a daily basis. In Israel, Arab citizens participate in general elections and enjoy freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom in academia, which are unimaginable in the West Bank and Gaza. A recent poll showed that 68% of Israel’s Arab citizens said that they prefer to live in Israel rather than in any other country. It is of course worth mentioning that the concept of an Israeli living in nearly any other Arab country is nil, particularly as some 800,000 Jews were summarily expelled from Arab countries, where they had lived for generations and indeed millennia, just for being Jewish.

For any peace plan to have a chance, it will need a dramatic change in the leadership of the Palestinian people. The incitement to hatred that still exists—despicably fuelled by textbooks that we, the British taxpayer, helped to finance, particularly in Gaza, denying the thousands of years of Jewish heritage to the land —has to be addressed by our Government and others in the West who care about the region. In Jerusalem, a city that I know well as chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation in the UK, the plan indicates that all of Jerusalem’s holy sites should remain under Israeli responsibility, particularly with regard to Temple Mount. This represents a significant acknowledgement of Israel’s sensitivity in guarding Jerusalem’s holy sites, as I am sure, if he were in his usual seat, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark would testify; they are open to people of all beliefs and tourists of all faiths.

In summary, we have seen that Israeli Arabs will not welcome this proposal and that the Palestinian leadership refuses to reassure Israeli Jews that a sovereign Palestinian state would not want to threaten Israel’s very existence. So it behoves us, the international community, to engage with the Palestinians to facilitate serious negotiations, using this or any other blueprint as a basis. I very much look forward to hearing from the Minister whether such plans are currently being formulated by Her Majesty’s Government.

I know noble Lords will indulge me a final 10 seconds to wish the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, a happy 88th birthday.