Speech by the Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP to the Heritage Foundation on Thursday 3rd of September 2015 at 11am (Washington Time) Please Check Against Delivery...
It is a pleasure to be back here at Heritage and particularly to be able to talk about a subject which, while dominant in the American media, is almost completely absent from view in the UK. Indeed, unless you have an interest in foreign affairs, it would be easy to be in complete ignorance about the fact that any deal has been done with Iran.
For the sake of clarity, let me say at the outset that I think any deal that genuinely put the acquisition of a nuclear weapon capability beyond the reach of Iran would be a good thing. It would be good for the region and it would be good for global security, because if Iran were ever to achieve such an objective, it would be the trigger for a destabilising arms race in the region with potentially catastrophic results.
But before I turned to the deal itself, let’s briefly look at the background to the negotiations.
The election of Hassan Rouhani as Iranian President in June 2013 was heralded by certain sections of the western commentariat as a landmark moment: here was a Government with whom we would be able to do business and who would bring Iran in from the cold. Calls for caution from seasoned Iran observers were lost in the now all too familiar triumph of wishful thinking over critical analysis and the superficial obsession with media-friendly projection. Fast forward to 2015 and it has become clear that the country’s direction has not changed. It was never going to, and those who expected change fundamentally misunderstand the structure of Iranian power.
President Rouhani was destined only ever to have a limited influence in a state dominated by the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard. Khamenei has shown an amazing ability for consistency that western politicians can only dream of.
He has never wavered in his detestation of the United States, his contempt for the existence of the state of Israel or his belief about the purity of the Islamic revolution and the cultural threats from outside. Critics are only half joking when they say he is more afraid of McDonald’s than Mossad.
Nor has President Rouhani’s Administration brought any respite for the Iranian people. In 2014 Iran was the world’s leader in executions per capita. Freedoms that we in the west take for granted continue to be aggressively curtailed. Persecution of those who supported the green movement, and their families, continues relentlessly, and the western media seem curiously detached from, or even indifferent to, the plight of their savagely repressed Iranian colleagues.
Iran remains a sponsor of state terrorism, providing financial, logistical and material support to Islamist terror groups across the region, including those targeting British and American forces when they were in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is just not possible, nor is it responsible, to see Iran’s nuclear ambitions outside the context of its support for terror proxies, arguably the defining feature of its foreign policy.
Anxieties over Iran's nuclear intentions are not in the realms of paranoia or fantasy. They are well placed. Iran’s extensive nuclear programme features many of the key components required to facilitate the domestic production of a nuclear weapon: possession of large quantities of enriched materials; knowledge to convert enriched materials into weaponised form; and the plans to develop a delivery mechanism in the form of ballistic missiles.
For those who say that Iran should be given the benefit of the doubt in any negotiation, let me say this. The country has a long history of clandestine nuclear work. Two of the nuclear-related facilities, at Natanz and Arak, which are at the centre of the international community’s concerns, were constructed secretly in a clear breach of the spirit, if not the letter, of Iran’s obligations under the NPT. For years, Iran used these facilities to enrich uranium to levels and quantities beyond those required for a legitimate and peaceful civil nuclear programme.
Iran routinely neglects its obligations to co-operate with the IAEA, including repeatedly denying IAEA inspectors access to contentious nuclear-related facilities, such as the one in Parchin at which it is suspected of having previously undertaken tests related to triggers for nuclear weapons. It is logical to assume that Iran’s intentions have been, and are, to develop a nuclear weapons capability at some point in the future, and any claims that its intentions are exclusively peaceful should not be regarded as credible.
So let us turn to the deal that has been agreed. In particular, let’s measure it against the timescale set, the issue of sanctions and assets and, perhaps most importantly, verification.
Let’s remember that the original aim of the international community was to ensure that Iran would never have the ability to possess a nuclear weapon. Now we find ourselves in the position where these original aims have somehow morphed into an agreement with Iran that will put its nuclear ambitions into suspended animation for a period of 10 years.
This all seems to be predicated on the belief that in this timeframe, internal change will produce a government that will ultimately lay the nation’s nuclear ambitions to rest. Let me give you two reasons why I believe this is a doomed gamble. The first is that there is no guarantee that there will be a change in Iran’s internal political position that produces a government more aligned with Western liberal values or policies. The second is that, even amongst many of the reformers, there is a belief that Iran is entitled not only to civil nuclear programme, but to a nuclear deterrent. There is, they argue, and not without justification, already a Sunni Islamic bomb in the shape of Pakistan’s nuclear capability. That reality is not going to change.
Let’s look at some of the other issues. On verification, anything less than unrestricted and unfettered access is unacceptable, because we know, in the light of the Iranians’ behaviour in the past, how they will manipulate any weakness in the terms of the IAEA’s access. Yet, instead of a clear and unambiguous commitment to unfettered access, we have this rather bizarre committee structure, and you can only get access to the committee when the IAEA declares a site as “suspicious”.
This was, for me, the worst surrender of all by the international community and the one for which we are most likely to pay a very high price.
Then we come to the lifting of sanctions and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. Rather than a graduated lifting of sanctions as a reward for full cooperation in implementation of the agreement, the P5 plus one seem to have caved in, completely, to the Supreme Leaders demand that they be lifted completely and immediately. Likewise, the immediate unfreezing of up to $150 billion of Iranian assets seems to be yet another surrender to the regime’s demands. One of the more ridiculous arguments I have heard is that the money will not necessarily be available to Iran as a substantial proportion of that will be used to pay off debts - in other words, it’s not real money. I have to tell you that if somebody paid off my bank overdraft, I would think it was real money, not least because I would be able to spend money on things other than debt repayment.
We have also been told that the money will not exacerbate the problem of Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran’s other proxies because they were already able to fund them while sanctions were in place. My interpretation would be exactly the opposite. If they regarded the funding of these groups as a priority when they were being tightly squeezed by financial sanctions, then they are likely to see them as prime candidates for extra funding when the tsunami of un-frozen assets hits them.
Next, we come to the lifting of the arms embargo and the issue of ballistic missile technology. This, if I remember correctly, was not even in the April agreement. Given that Iranian supplied arms have been used against our own forces directly in Afghanistan and against our allies through the violent proxies supported by Iran, to make such a concession without any guarantees about change in behaviour by Iran in the region seems utterly extraordinary to the point of being incomprehensible. Likewise, the change in policy towards ballistic missile development. In terms of missile technology, why would you want to develop a ballistic missile capability when you claim that you have nothing that you wish to deliver by such a system?
All of these, taken together, seem like the fulfilment of the Iranians wish list rather than a hardheaded negotiation based upon the need to improve regional and global security. It does rather begs the question as to why it took so long to negotiate!
So what rationale is given for this approach?
We are told that these measures will help Iran to become embedded in the international economic order in a way that will encourage reform and, through economic interdependence, become less of a threat to their neighbours and ourselves. I would just point out that bringing Russia into the G8 did not exactly make it a less aggressive or expansionist nation. If anything, it fed Putin’s pretensions. There is no guarantee that economic interdependence with a state which has a fundamentally different outlook will produce the desired behaviour. “But wait.”, we are told, “after 1945 Europe became much more economically interdependent and look how it has led to a prolonged period of peace on the continent.”
My reply is that we are nations with a broadly similar outlook, similar democratic systems and similar values in relation to the law and individual rights. It is very different when you’re playing with someone who has very different rules. Russia, I believe, is given as a vivid example of that and, I would suggest, Iran is another.
If any proof were required, the supreme leader has already said that while he supports the deal, he reiterated that the Iranian government was “180°” different to us.
We are told that this deal had to be accepted because there was no other approach available. I simply do not believe this to be true. Iran came to the table because sanctions were becoming an enormous burden economically to the extent that it was beginning to threaten political stability. Maintaining sanctions until such time as Iran was willing to accept a tougher deal was certainly an option.
Likewise, we are told that the snapback of sanctions is the solution to any flaws that might be contained within the agreement. Again, this merits the greatest scepticism.
Once Iranian assets are unfrozen and sanctions lifted, Iran will be able to make very rapid progress in seeking the partners needed to repair and update their ageing infrastructure in both the civil and military fields. Not only will the potential effectiveness of subsequent sanctions be diminished with time, but Western governments will face increased pressure from their own domestic industrial interests once contracts have been signed, projects have begun, and profits are put at risk. We know that and the Iranians know that.
Perhaps those of us who believe that this is not a good deal are just being cynical.
Maybe there will be genuine political change in Iran by the time the ten-year envelope has passed.
Maybe any change will make Iran into a constructive partner in the region and beyond.
Maybe Iran will offer genuinely free and open access to international inspectors.
Maybe they will be completely honest and transparent with us.
Maybe they will follow their own religious strictures that say developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
Maybe they won’t use their unfrozen assets to fund proxies in the region in the way that they have in the past.
Maybe they won’t try to manipulate the terms of the treaty in ways that suit their interests.
Maybe they won’t improve their coffers with the sale of oil and gas, and then, at some point, utilise their ability for breakout which might be as little as seven months with the upgraded centrifuges that they will be allowed to keep.
But it’s a lot of maybes!
The hallmark of Western security policy in recent years has been a triumph of wishful thinking over critical analysis. Policymakers have a duty to make assessments based on how the world really is, not how they would like it to be.
Wishful thinking is not a great approach to life. It is a dangerous foreign policy and it is a potentially catastrophic security policy.
Let us hope that those of us who have these reservations and who believe that this is simply pushing a difficult problem down the line in order to gain political plaudits today, let us hope that we are wrong. But I wouldn’t bet any money on it.