Iran

Debate between Ben Wallace and Mike Gapes

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. He rightly says, first, that Ahmadinejad will not be able to stay in power, because he is term limited; this is the end of his term as President and someone else will emerge in the next elections. My hon. Friend is also right about maintaining the momentum of the Arab spring. We must double our efforts on maintaining the momentum on the street. I approve of BBC Persian and I approve of doing much more work to support, externally and internally, opposition groups on the streets of Iran. I have not forgotten the lesson of the cold war, where Poland and the printing presses made so much difference. We should bring those lessons into Iran as much as possible.

We need to maintain the momentum of the Arab spring, although Persia is not Arab, and be consistent in Bahrain and Syria. If we unlock Bahrain and Syria, I would pledge that, in that instance, Iran would start to turn and those middle classes and those on the streets would begin to see a difference. In Bahrain, where the Shi’a majority rose up against a Crown prince, we saw a rather lukewarm response from the west, but it was different in Libya and Syria. Let us be consistent, and push that momentum, which will help to make a difference to solving the problem.

On the diplomatic track, I am delighted that the Foreign Secretary has reiterated that we have not broken off diplomatic relations with Iran. I urge the Foreign Office to examine whether we can send a diplomat back to Iran. We do not have to open up the embassy—we did not break relations. We need to be there. The Union Jack means something to many people on the street, and it means something to the opposition. The embassy is well used to co-ordinated protests, stones, and streets being called Bobby Sands avenue next to it as a reminder, apparently, of British imperialism. The Foreign Office used to stand for the Union Jack around the world, and we should be a bit stronger than that.

[Mike Gapes]

Is there not a big difference between what happened to British embassies in previous years and what was carried out, co-ordinated by elements in the regime, just a few months ago? It is not just the naming of streets but the ransacking of diplomats’ homes and of the embassy complex.

[Mr Wallace]

I fully agree that it is very different. I do not propose that we open the embassy as if nothing happened. If we had a diplomat in another embassy, as we have done before, we could provide visas. The strength is to open and maintain transport links to and from Iran so that people can see what is going on in Iran. Iranians could come and see what is going on in the real world outside, away from some of the manipulation. If we could secure a consulate section in another embassy, that would help.

Every protest outside the embassy was co-ordinated by the regime, and that has been the case for 30 years. It is not new—most of this is not new. In dealing with Iran, we have to know them as well as they know themselves if we are to secure a diplomatic solution. Trying to do that in isolation, or trying to do it with the E3 plus 3 that sometimes works, but sometimes does not, depending on the mood of China and Russia, is one of our biggest challenges. Most of the sanctions that have been mentioned are unilateral, and are not United Nations sanctions. It would be worrying to set off down that path if we did not remember that, at the end of the day, if we were going to take the next step to military action, we did not have UN sanctions. I urge the Government, who are doing the right thing—the Foreign Secretary made the position clear—to ensure that we never stop the effort to achieve a peaceful resolution to this problem.