Writing for The Telegraph this week, Robert Jenrick MP exposed the failings of the Iran nuclear deal, stating that the UK has “had a blind spot for the failings of Iran for too long”. The Conservative MP for Newark wrote that the case of British-Iranian dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, held in Iran “for no good reason”, has “finally captured Parliament and the nation’s attention and forced us to examine how we hold Iran to account for its actions”.
He said that Westminster is “waking up to the reality that elements in Iran have meant us harm for some time” and that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) supported by the UK “is silent upon much of it”.
Mr Jenrick rebuked the lack of discussion prior to the nuclear deal of “Iran’s support for armed insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan who killed British troops with the deadly IED’s and the training Iran supplied”.
He added that “there had been little discussion of the concerns expressed by our allies in the Gulf or in Israel at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ growing influence in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region”.
The Conservative MP expressed his concerns about Iran’s “oppressive criminal code; religious zeal professing moral authority; nuclear ambitions; [and] racial division” within the country.
Making clear his misgivings about the nuclear deal, the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Home Secretary Amber Rudd underlined that the agreement “fails to address Iran’s ballistic missile programme… it delays rather than ends Iran’s nuclear ambitions… [and] does not tackle the acts of terror and subversion which undermine us and the interests of our allies”.
Mr Jenrick, who sits on the board of the Conservative Party, suggested that instead of abandoning the deal completely, European leaders must now work with the United States by “calling out and tackling Iran’s other destabilising activities, its support for terrorism and its missile programme”.
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