UK lawmakers on Wednesday urged Britainto spearhead an international effort to replace the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,in a new report calling for tougher relations with Tehran, reports AFP.
Parliament’s watchdog foreign affairs committee said the deal to rein inIran’s ballistic missile programme — known formally as the JointComprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was now “a shell of an agreement” and“beyond repair”.
“Despite good intentions, the JCPOA was an agreement built on weakfoundations,” committee chairman Tom Tugendhat said, noting its demise “seems to have been inevitable”.
“The UK Government should work to broker a replacement to the JCPOA whichalso addresses regional security,” he added. “The voices of allies in the region and in Europe, and with the new USadministration, need to come together to ensure a diplomatic option is available to those in Iran who are looking for a solution to decades ofisolation.”
The committee’s report also urged the British government to respond moreeffectively to Tehran’s “wider destabilising activities” in the region.
It recommended a range of measures including designating Iran’s elitemilitary force — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — a terroristorganisation, as the United States did last year. The MPs said the IRGC’s “clear and enduring support for terrorists andnon-state actors working to undermine stability in the region” would permitthe move under UK law. “This is a logical extension of the existing restrictions placed onmembers of the IRGC by the EU’s sanctions regime and would follow the US’decision to proscribe the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 2019,”the report said. Meanwhile, the lawmakers also warned Tehran against arbitrarily detainingforeign and dual nationals, saying it amounted to “state hostage taking”.
The UK’s current approach to the issue is “clearly not working”, theysaid, calling for improved support to those detained and their families. Tensions between London and Tehran have been severely strained in recentyears by the detention of several dual nationals, most prominently NazaninZaghari-Ratcliffe. The British-Iranian woman, who worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation –– the media organisation’s philanthropic arm — has been held in Tehran since2016. Iranian authorities convicted her of sedition — a charge Zaghari-Ratcliffe has always contested — and she is serving a five-year prison term.
“The UK Government must call the arbitrary detention of foreign nationalswhat it is hostage taking,” Tugendhat said.
“The charges, trials and convictions of British citizens on Iranian soilare a parody of a justice system.
“Using young mothers and retirees as bargaining chips and leverage is anunacceptable form of diplomacy,” he said.
