I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it. It is, for all the reasons set out by my right hon. Friend, a timely debate. It is also timely because it comes after the report of the board of governors of the
IAEA on 30 May and the subsequent resolution of 8 June, which censures Iran for non-co-operation with the agency’s inquiry into nuclear traces found at three non-declared sites. That action on the part of the agency is certainly a step forward, but it goes nowhere near far enough.
Iran’s nuclear programme has been known about since 2002, when the existence of the facilities at Natanz and Arak were revealed by the Iranian democratic Opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The Iranian regime has always asserted that its programme is for civilian purposes only and has always denied that it is attempting to produce nuclear weapons. That simply defies belief. As we have heard, despite the terms of the JCPOA, Iran started enriching uranium to 20% in 2010, and later the same year it moved to 60% enrichment. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, that is considerably beyond anything that is needed for civilian purposes.
In its report of 1 June, the Institute for Science and International Security concluded:
“Iran’s breakout timeline is now at zero. It has enough 60 percent enriched uranium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) to be assured it could fashion a nuclear explosive. If Iran wanted to further enrich its 60 percent HEU up to weapon-grade HEU, or 90 percent, it could do so within a few weeks with only a few of its advanced centrifuge cascades.”
Clearly the time pressure is enormous. The report went on to note:
“Whether or not Iran enriches its HEU up to 90 percent, it can have enough HEU for two nuclear weapons within one month after starting breakout.”
That is, by any standards, a very worrying state of affairs.
It is made all the more worrying by Iran’s increasingly erratic and aggressive stance in the region and, indeed, the wider world. As my right hon. Friend rightly pointed out, Iran is an active state sponsor of terrorism—probably the world’s leading state sponsor. Its proxies are engaged in fomenting conflict in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. My right hon. Friend mentioned the Istanbul incident; I would like to mention the incident in June 2018, when a bomb plot targeting a gathering of Iranian pro-democracy supporters in Paris was disrupted by the French and Belgian authorities. An Iranian diplomat accredited to the embassy in Vienna was subsequently convicted for leading the conspiracy and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Three accomplices were convicted, and their sentences were upheld, with two years added, by the court of appeal in Antwerp in May. Iran is certainly exporting terrorism not just throughout the region, but across the world.