July 4, 2004

Excerpt

QUESTION:  The arrest of the eight British service men accused by Iran of intruding into their territorial waters led to some sharp words between London and Tehran and there have been renewed suspicions among those who know that despite its protestations Iran is pressing ahead with a nuclear weapons' programme. I asked the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw if the row over the seizure of the service men was symptomatic of Tehran's intransigence.

JACK STRAW:  On the whole the co-operation which we have received from Iran both in respect of Afghanistan and in respect of Iraq has been good and productive so it's unfortunate that this incident has arisen. I hope it can be resolved satisfactorily. We've got the men back which was the prime matter but there are other matters still outstanding and we can then move on.

QUESTION:  But you've always advocated engagement with Tehran, the Americans haven't always been entirely supportive of this but doesn't this suggest Foreign Secretary that quiet diplomacy of your sort simply doesn't work?

JACK STRAW:  Part of the problem that we have in terms of our relations with Iran go back to our domination of that region. We had been instrumental in putting the Shah's father on the throne and many aspects of the Shah's regime were brutal, repressive, sought to strike out Iran's past and also its Islamic heritage and its Islamic beliefs. So those things are associated in many Iranians' minds with the United Kingdom. I happen to believe that the approach that we in the United Kingdom Government have adopted in recent years is the correct approach. Iran is a very important country, it is the dominant player in the region so you can't ignore it and I think that the approach that we have adopted and I'm working very closely with France and Germany particularly on the nuclear dossier is the correct approach.

QUESTION:  Right the nuclear dossier, this is actually far more important than anything else. Now you as you say went to Tehran with Dominique de Villepin and Joschka Fischer and you thought you'd got a deal with them. Then the deal seems to unravel I mean only recently Mohammed El-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency said he's very worried about their plans for possibly acquiring nuclear weapons. This was discussed in NATO last weekend it, it, again it looks as if your engagement and diplomacy with them simply gets rebuffed.

JACK STRAW:  We've not had full co-operation from the Iranians in the process to which they themselves have voluntarily committed within the International Atomic Energy Agency. What I'd say to critics is what, what's your alternative? What we are seeking to do and sometimes it feels that we're doing it in a crab like way and it does involve intense pressure and above all maintaining an international consensus which so far France, Germany, the UK have managed to achieve against the odds is to get the Iranians to accept that they have been under long standing obligations to meet their commitments under the Non Proliferation Treaty. Now what we're certainly a long way further forward in terms of getting them to meet those commitments than they were three years ago. The result of our meeting in Tehran in, on October the 21st was to gain further commitments out of the Iranians, voluntary ones by them. What we are now doing is holding them to it. Now the, the difficulties you know getting the Iranians to stick to their obligations in a sense is a further reflection of this very unusual system of government which they have with on the one hand they have an elected president, President Khatami and his government, on the other hand you have the non elected government which in many respects is actually more powerful under the supreme religious leader. Now you've got this dualist approach of Islamic guided democracy so called just as I'm afraid the Shah had an approach of Islamic secular democracy.

QUESTION:  Isn't the difficulty that if for example you apply sanctions as, as leverage on, on Iran that will actually strengthen the hardliners and rather side line or rather undermine the more liberal reformist elements?

JACK STRAW:  Well we haven't got to that position yet. What we have is a position where the Iranians at every level, every part of the government have said categorically on many occasions that they have not got a nuclear weapons' programme, they have no intention of using the civil nuclear technology to which they do have access to build a nuclear weapons' programme.

QUESTION:  Do you believe them?

JACK STRAW:  Well I'm not sure is the answer, and nobody is. Where they've not helped themselves is in not providing full and frank disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency. We're only involved in this long scale engagement with them on the IAEA dossier as a result of disclosures which came out from opposition groups that they had two nuclear facilities whose existence and practices had not been made known to the IAEA as it should have done. Of course it can be frustrating and it certainly is frustrating. Two steps forward and it's sometimes two back as well but bit by bit I believe we are making progress and I hope and believe that we can convince all levels of the government in Iran that it is profoundly in their interests, whether they're conservatives or reformers to continue fully to comply with the IAEA's obligations.

QUESTION:  If you looked at it from the Iranian point of view this is as you say an important, a strategically critical also a volatile and, and prickly nation and, and, and very conscious of its, of its status in the world, if you looked at it from the Iranian point of view they'd say there's Israel it's got nuclear weapons, India, Pakistan got nuclear weapons, we're surrounded by American bases all over that part of the world, America's in Afghanistan on one side of us, America's in Iraq on the other, why shouldn't we have nuclear weapons because we see that as a threat.

JACK STRAW:  Well Israel, India and Pakistan are not signatories to the Non Proliferation Treaty. We want and very powerfully committed to a nuclear free Middle East but that has to happen in order. We now have a nuclear free Mahgreb with the decision by the leader of Libya to abandon their nuclear weapons' programme. We also have a nuclear free Iraq. Iran and, and I have made this point on a number of occasions to President Khatami of Iran also needs to abandon its aggressive stance towards Israel. The fact that for example on national day parades they have three missiles with the legend written in English on the side death to Israel. Now this aggressive stance to Israel is bound to mean that Israel is going to take or seek to take steps to protect itself from annihilation.

QUESTION:  And so is Iran I suppose?

JACK STRAW:  Well no one's threatening Iran's territorial integrity, no one is saying that Iran should not exist. Israel's territorial integrity I'm afraid is threatened. I don't happen to approve of a lot of the actions which the government of Israel takes and I make that very clear but I also say that if you want a nuclear free Middle East then you have to ensure that first of all it is the Arab and Islamic countries which remove their threat to Israel and then we can put a great deal more pressure on Israel to abandon its undoubted nuclear weapons' programme which has been there whether people like it or not for defensive purposes. But I also just make this point because Iran is in rather paradoxical position. On the one hand as you say it may feel threatened by the presence of American, United Kingdom and other coalition troops on both its eastern and its western borders in Afghanistan and in Iraq but the paradox of our liberation of Afghanistan and our liberation of Iraq from Saddam is actually to make the Iranian position much stronger. Before they were threatened by Iraq and to a degree by the instability in Afghanistan.

QUESTION:  Isn't the real lesson of the Iraq war that if Saddam Hussein had had credible and deliverable weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, he wouldn't have been invaded and overthrown any more than we've invaded North Korea and overthrown Kim Jong Il? That's the real paradoxical and unfortunate lesson of Iraq.

JACK STRAW:  I don't accept that. No one has any intention of launching military action against Iran. Iran has said itself that it does not want nuclear weapons nor in terms of regional stability does it have any reasons to acquire them or build up a programme for them.