PROSPECTS FOR BETTER RELATIONS WITH IRAN

A Talk by Richard Bacon MP, Chairman, All Party Parliamentary Group on Iran

Held at The British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, 3rd July, 2015

Mr Richard Bacon MP

I am very pleased to have this chance to discuss Iran with you, a country which I think is quite plainly one of the most important in the Middle East.

But I think we do need to accept that to many people in the UK this is not obviously so.

The UK's poor relations with Iran over recent decades have allowed us collectively to forget just how important a country Iran is.

With a population of around 78 million people, it is about the same size as Turkey and, within the Middle East, only exceeded in population by Egypt, although – despite the effects of sanctions – Iran has a more advanced economy than Egypt's.

Indeed, Iran's population is greater than the population of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Israel & Palestine (how ever you count or name them) combined.

Iran has three times the population of Syria and more than twice the population of Iraq.

Iran also has a more advanced economy than most of its neighbours.

Despite the very significant problems facing Iran because of economic sanctions and – in some cases – internal mismanagement, its overall GDP places Iran in the top thirty economies in the world, not only larger than some of the smaller European economies such as Denmark, Hungary or Portugal but also larger than South Africa or Thailand or Malaysia.

These facts will I am sure come as no surprise at all to you in this audience, but I think they will be a surprise to many people, and we need to take every opportunity to remind people of them.

I became actively interested in Iran only quite recently.

Although I did make a somewhat desultory attempt to obtain an Iranian visa over twenty years ago, when my interest was stirred while touring through eastern Anatolia and travelling very close to the Iranian border, I remember being put off by the then £540 price tag for a 7-day visitor's visa to Iran.

My interest was rekindled in 2012, some years after becoming an MP, because there was a considerable increase in the level of rhetoric against Iran, particularly by the United States, due to concerns about whether what was said to be a civilian nuclear power programme might actually conceal a programme to produce weapons of mass destruction.

It is only too easy to forget now – because it did not happen – but at that time, in 2012, the prospect of a military attack against Iran seemed very real. The then US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta predicted that Israel would launch an attack on Iran by April or June 2012.

Having already been in Parliament ten years earlier during 2002 – when over many months there was an enormous build-up of rhetoric against Iraq, which, although personally I voted against it, eventually led to a decision in early 2003 to invade Iraq, a country that hadn't threatened us, hadn't attacked us, and didn't want war with us, in order to disarm it of weapons it didn't possess – you may imagine that I found this new talk of a secret WMD programme eerily familiar.

And in particular I found the notion that we were – or perhaps should be prepared to be – on the cusp of launching military action against Iran little short of foolish.

In the spring of 2012, I decided to visit the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to hear for myself what the nuclear inspectors had to say. And what became clear was that although the inspectors had a range of serious concerns, which they set out carefully, they also said quite explicitly: "We have no evidence of weapons grade material".

I discovered during that visit to Vienna that I was among fellow sceptics. All the parliamentary colleagues who came on the visit – or, at least, all those who had been in Parliament at the time – had voted against military action in Iraq in 2003.

I continued to take an interest in Iran. And only by doing so did I start to learn some of the facts about Iran and its relations with the West, which are so easily obscured once a country starts to be labelled as a "pariah" state.

When one visits Iran, as I was fortunate to do last December, the most abiding impression is what a normal and modern place it is. As Jack Straw once commented, it is much more like Madrid or Athens than it is like Cairo.

But when the "pariah" label is applied, facts and reason are displaced by an easy and lazy narrative which can be endlessly regurgitated without the tiresome inconvenience of having to think and without the considerable effort which is required to understand the world as it appears through someone else's eyes. The American author Mark Twain is said to have once observed that ""A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on" and I certainly think this has been true of our views about Iran.

For example, how many people know that – far from being an odd and therefore automatically suspicious departure – Iran's efforts to develop a civilian nuclear power programme actually began in the 1960s, with the assistance of the American company General Electric?

How many people know that Israel was not merely one of Iran's most reliable partners during the time of the Shah but remained as probably the single most reliable supplier of weapons to Iran for many years after the Iranian Revolution, as Iran battled against Saddam Hussein's Iraq? How many people know that the UK sold £500 million worth of Chieftain tanks to Iran but stopped the delivery after the 1979 revolution, while nonetheless we decided to keep the money? And that, to add insult to injury, we then gave the tanks to Saddam Hussein so that he could use them to kill Iranians? Or that when in 2012 three Iranian officials arrived at Heathrow with valid passports and valid visas to discuss the return of the £500 million which we acknowledge we still owe to them, they were told that there had been some kinds of mistake – and then they were put on a plane back to Tehran?

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington, at the same time as there was on the Arab street what could most accurately be described as "gloating" about the 9/11 attacks – a sentiment that was by no means confined to Arab countries – it was also found on the European Left, where there was a quite widely articulated sense that somehow America "deserved" to be attacked or "had it coming" – how many people are aware that in Iran what happened after the 9/11 attacks was that flags flew at half mast, that tens of thousands of people in Tehran rallied to show their support for America's plight, and that there were torch-lit vigils – which were officially approved – in sympathy with the Americans? How many people know this?

How many people know that in the aftermath of 9/11, Iran offered important logistical help to the United States – help which was accepted by the US and which made it significantly easier for the Americans to launch their offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan? The Taliban which, not incidentally, Iran had always opposed and considered to represent a twisted perversion of Islam?

It was only a few weeks later, of course, that in return for the Iranians' trouble, for this act of solidarity, President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech labelled Iran as part of the so-called "Axis of Evil".

How many people know that in 2003 Iran offered a ‘Grand Bargain' to the United States via the Swiss ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldimann, which included an offer by the Iranians to:

  • end their support for Islamic Jihad and Hamas and to pressure them to cease attacks on Israel;
  • to support the disarmament of Hizbollah and to assist in transforming Hizbollah into purely a political party;
  • to put their nuclear programme under intrusive international inspections in order to alleviate fears about weaponisation,
  • to provide full co-operation against all terrorist organisations;
  • and to accept and to offer full Iranian support to the Beirut Declaration of the Arab League, that is to say, the Saudi-sponsored peace plan from March 2002 in which all the Arab states offered collective peace, the normalising of relations and diplomatic recognition of Israel, in return for Israel's withdrawal from all the Occupied Territories, an agreement to share Jerusalem, an equitable solution of the Palestinian refugee issue and the adoption of the Two State solution?

What an opportunity that was for the world – if we had not had in the White House at the time such ham-fisted leadership.

I visited the IAEA again last year, when the nuclear talks were heading towards a crucial point. We met several of the ambassadors to the IAEA, of whom the most strident against Iran was not actually the American ambassador, but, by a long way, the French.

The Iranian American foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi suggested in his book A Single Roll of the Dice that relations between Iran and the West – particularly between Iran and the United States – had become so polarised over thirty years that it was no longer merely an antagonistic relationship but had become "institutionalised enmity" – a set of behaviours so entrenched on both sides that the participants could not find a way out.

Last year the nuclear talks were not only heading towards a crucial point but also towards the US mid-term elections – and it could so easily have gone wrong. It is enormously to the credit of the Obama administration that the talks continued.

We are all awaiting what is going on in Vienna right now on tenterhooks. But I think it is clear that both sides believe there has been enormous progress in the nuclear talks and there appears to be a political will on both sides to produce a result even if, in order to do so, deadlines have to slip slightly.

Some time ago the US Director of National Intelligence in the US "Worldwide Threat Assessment" removed Iran from the list of states which were a threat to the United States and indeed noted Iran's efforts in fighting terrorists, including ISIL, and highlighting Iran's "intentions to dampen sectarianism, build responsive partners, and deescalate tensions with Saudi Arabia."

The assessment went on to state that Iran has "overarching strategic goals of enhancing its security, prestige, and regional influence [that] have led it to pursue capabilities to meet its civilian goals".

We have seen the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan call Benjamin Netanyahu's policies "destructive to the future and security of Israel", and his successor as Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, state in terms that the biggest threat to Israel's security is the conflict with the Palestinians, not Iran's nuclear program. Yuval Diskin, former head of Shin Bet, has said something very similar, warning that failing to reach a Palestinian peace deal is a bigger existential threat to Israel than a nuclear Iran.

I am inclined to agree with the former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian when he said:

"The best strategy is to pursue a broad engagement with Iran to ensure that the decision to pursue a nuclear breakout will never come about. Iran and the United States are already tacitly and indirectly cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State. A nuclear agreement would be a great boost to mutual trust and provide greater options for dealing not only with IS and the Syrian regime but also Afghanistan and Iraq — where both Washington and Tehran support the new governments in Kabul and Baghdad."

TRADE OPPORTUNITIES

My sense is that we are on the cusp of very big changes, that there are many opportunities for trade and commerce, and that trade is already beginning to blossom.

There are very considerable and rapidly growing trade relations between Iran and Russia, which the two governments recently announced they would like to see grow to $70 billion per year. Trade between Iran and China amounted to $51.8 billion in 2014, a 72 percent rise from $39.5 billion in 2013. Japan is seeing rapidly growing oil imports from Iran.

Every time one opens the newspaper there is news of another trade delegation to Iran, whether from Sweden, The Netherlands, or Germany.

Even France, supposedly among the most trenchant against a deal, has said that commercially Iran is a new "strategic partner". Just a few days ago the French hotel group ACCOR announced that it was looking closely at investing in more hotel capacity in Iran as sanctions are expected to come to an end, in what should be a phenomenal country for tourism but which could not currently cope with the expected influx.

And the United States will not be far behind. Iran is now preparing to negotiate with Google. The sectors where the US has a competitive advantage, such as agriculture and pharmaceuticals, already seem to benefit from much easier access to Letters of Comfort issued by US regulators to American businesses financed by US banks than do the equivalent UK businesses financed by non-American banks, where fully legal and non-sanctioned trade often seems to face insuperable hurdles connected with threats from US regulators. And one should be wholly unsurprised – as The Economist newspaper recently suggested – if American enterprises using local middlemen start to seal initial deals in Iran very quickly. Indeed, The Economist quoted one middleman as saying: "If there is a nuclear deal, you will find overnight that the Americans have signed one-year options on the best projects".

Where is the UK in all of this? Well, I hope you will be able to tell me. My concern is that the UK should be sufficiently nimble and fleet of foot to embrace the commercial opportunities which will come.

STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES

Nonetheless, despite the considerable benefit that could come to both Iran and the UK from an improved commercial relationship, I think the biggest opportunity is a strategic one.

Iran was first in the front line against the Taliban. Iran has been in the line against Al Qaeda. And now they are in the front line against Daesh. Iran has been in the front line for years.

We often hear – quite rightly – about the sacrifice made by the 453 British servicemen and women who gave their lives in Afghanistan. But how often does one hear hear about the 4,000 Iranian soldiers who have been killed on the Afghan border protecting Iran against the narcotic traffickers?

At a time when the West appears clueless as to how to respond to the threat of Daesh, Iran – which is without the slightest question one of the key protagonists in the region – offers deep local knowledge, a desire for regional stability and a perfectly understandable desire for international recognition of its key role.

If we only have the wit and tact to start treating Iran routinely with the dignity which it expects and deserves, I believe that Iran could become a key force for stability and growth in the region.

Thank you.

The content of this talk does not necessarily express the views of The British Iranian Chamber of Commerce. The views and opinions expressed are those of the speaker.