Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
SIR RICHARD
DALTON AND
DR. ROSEMARY
HOLLIS
2 MAY 2007
Q20 Andrew Mackinlay: May I ask Dr.
Hollis and Sir Richard a question? Admittedly, you are not in
the Foreign Office, but I want to put to you my impression. Des
Browne, in his statement in the House of Commons, implied that
other people, presumably coalition partners, were fulfilling rigorously
and with vigour the search and board, but he has never been able
to show that that was so. Last week, there was an announcement
that we have returned to that. Surely the truth is that this day,
the Royal Navy is not doing search and board in the same location,
to the same extent and with the same frequency, and that therefore
the Iranians have clearly gained their central objective.
Dr. Hollis: Wait a minute. If
we are talking about the exchanging of signals, it was 24 hours
before the personnel were captured that one member of the British
service personnel in the Basra area said that although he could
not prove it, he was being informed that Iranians were behind
the channel of money going to Iraqis, averaging $500 a head, to
pay them to attack British soldiers. That is quite an accusation.
He said that he could not prove it, but that he was hearing it.
I see one explanation for the Iranian action
within a couple of days of that. It demonstrated that we have
a very complex relationship. The background is that the Iranians
have been accusing the British of interfering in Khuzestan, a
south-west province on the Iranian side of the border that is
populated by a majority of Arabs. It is therefore confusing for
a British soldier in Iraq when dealing with an Iranian national
who happens to be from Arabestan and is speaking Arabic to some
friends or relatives in Basra. When are they doing transactions
and friendly engagement, and when are they causing a problem for
the British? And exactly who is on whose side anyway?
In those circumstances, one could give an explanation
for the British who might be conducting operations in a somewhat
different mode since the episode. It might just be cautionary
tactics, as opposed to backing down specifically to Iranian pressure.
Both players in that difficult area have accepted that there is
far too much room for a small misunderstanding to spin out of
control, escalate and cause blows.
Q21 Andrew Mackinlay: I welcome your
explaining that to us, but it gives credence to my feeling that
things are not being done in the same fashion, to the same extent,
in the same location and with the same frequency as they did before
the seizure of Royal Navy personnel. That is your view?
Dr. Hollis: Yes, but that need
not be backing down under pressure.
Sir Richard Dalton: Do we have
any information to that effect—that things have been done
differently by the Royal Navy? I do not.
Q22 Chairman: But it is a fact that
we do not have the boats back. The Iranians still hold them.
Sir Richard Dalton: Yes.
Q23 Chairman: Therefore there is
unresolved business for our presence and the effectiveness of
what we can do.
Dr. Hollis: May I add another
thing here? The British were inspecting vessels, and still are,
to look for smugglers. How, if not through illicit trade, are
some of the militiamen who are fighting for control of the local
governorship in Basra to get their income? How, if not through
that kind of trafficking, linking their mates on one side of the
border with their mates on the other side? The British are literally
interfering with local politics in Iraq, and local politics and
the Iranians are in bed together.
Q24 Mr. Purchase: May I try to press
you a bit further? I am not quite sure how important this all
is, but to reinforce what I was trying to get across earlier,
we know that Margaret Beckett spoke to her Iranian counterpart
Mottaki on several occasions—whether it was useful or not,
she did that. We know that there was the phone call from Nigel
Sheinwald to Ali Larijani, which was probably key to the whole
affair.
The Prime Minister has said that there was a
dual-track strategy. One track was bilateral dialogue with the
Iranian regime, and the FCO in London and the British ambassador
in Iran made attempts to engage with the Iranians. All that strikes
me as probably quite a successful effort to resolve the difficulties.
I do not understand why it is necessary to say that there were
no negotiations and there was no side deal. It seems blindingly
obvious to me that here were people struggling to find a way forward
and finding one, but then for some reason not wanting to say that
they had found one. Let me specific: how important do you think
Sheinwald's discussion on the telephone was to the whole process?
Sir Richard Dalton: I would have
thought that it was very important for Britain not to be seen
to be paying a price to get its own captives back. That was a
fundamentally important objective of Her Majesty's Government,
and I support it. Somebody who acts illegally to take captives
in such a way will only be encouraged to do so again, if they
gain something tangible from it.
I do not think that Iran was the winner in the
episode, and I do not agree with Bolton—we may come on to
him later—that it was a "double victory" for Iran.
They managed to pull their chestnuts out of the fire by conceding
when they did, because the situation was getting worse for them.
I stand by my thought that that happy coincidence could well have
been arranged, but I can quite see why the British Government
would want to deny that it specifically paid a price to the Iranians.
I do not know what Sir Nigel Sheinwald and Mr. Larijani talked
about, so I cannot really comment on that.
Q25 Mr. Purchase: I will not press
this any further. I merely say that if you put the whole thing
together it lacks a certain credibility, and I think that we may
not have controlled it.
Dr. Hollis: I wonder, though;
surely successful diplomacy is about resolving a source of dispute
with face saved on both sides. I noticed the way in which the
press were asking questions towards the end of the episode. They
did not seem to be operating with a concept of win-win. They wanted
to discover who had won. A more direct answer to your question
would have enabled them to say, "Aha, the British caved in.
We had to concede something to get this resolved." Then the
British press would have been assisting the Iranians, and the
British politicians who had given the straighter answer for which
you are looking could potentially have given the Iranians an additional
propaganda benefit. Personally, I was puzzled that there seemed
to be only a Bolton-like understanding that there must be a winner
and there must be a loser.
Q26 Mr. Purchase: I like the idea
that we arrived at a sensible conclusion. There was a whole series
of events and the outcome was satisfactory, yet very senior people
suggested that nothing had happened, that they just gave in.
Dr. Hollis: Could it also be that
Jon Snow provoked a new twist in the saga? Am I not right in thinking
that Sheinwald spoke to Larijani after he was given the terms
of the conversation on British television?
Chairman: Could we move on, please? We
have other areas to cover.
Q27 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I think
that you are being fantastically innocent if you really think
that those parallel moves were not part of an overall negotiation.
It is only diplomats who can dress these things up in that way.
Let us leave it as a happy coincidence.
I am interested in what lessons there are for
future relations with Iran. We have heard that we do not know
on whose authority the hostages were taken, nor who was behind
the decision-making process that led to their release. It is all
opaque; there are many centres of authority in Iran. How, then,
will we make agreements over issues such as Iran's interference
in Iraq, where they are destabilising the country and killing
a lot of people, or the nuclear issue? It is a large rogue state
and we do not know who is in charge. How and with whom will we
negotiate with the prospect of making agreements that stick?
Sir Richard Dalton: We do know
who is in charge: it is the Supreme Leader, who is called upon
to referee disputes, if they exist, between his military and civilian
leaderships. It is exactly the same as the power structure in
any other Government; there is a top dog who is called upon to
arbitrate. Sometimes he is called a President, sometimes he is
called a Prime Minister, but we should not be bamboozled into
thinking that nobody is in charge in Iran because he is called
the supreme leader and because many of the concepts are rather
unfamiliar. The system works quite efficiently. The main politico-security
decisions are debated in the Supreme National Security Council,
which Mr. Larijani heads. There is a representative of the Supreme
Leader in that body, who along with Mr. Larijani has direct access
to the Supreme Leader, who then endorses or differs from the decision
that has come from the tier below. There is an iterative process
as decisions are prepared, in which the leader's circle of advisers
are brought in and consulted. Again, there are parallels in other
government systems, including our own. By the time the issue comes
up for decision, the path to something that will stick is smoothed.
It is extremely difficult to make that system
work for the benefit of foreigners, not so much because the system
is opaque, but because the issues are highly difficult and the
differences on the actual substance are immense. As European negotiators,
we felt that if it had been possible in the course of European
negotiations on a Political Dialogue agreement to reach agreement
on human rights, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or the
Middle East peace process, and the Supreme Leader and the rest
of the system had endorsed the agreements that had been negotiated
at a lower level, they would have stuck. Since we, as the UK,
have tried to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran at the
proper level, our experience was that the agreements that we reached
were broadly fulfilled satisfactorily by the Iranian side.
Q28 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I am still
unclear. There is an unelected Supreme Leader and an elected President,
who we all thought had a lot of authority. Finally, he paraded
the captives and said how lucky they were to go home. There is
also a Foreign Minister. We had difficulty reaching anyone in
the first week of the crisis. That does not seem to impart a lot
of confidence in how and with whom we will reach agreements. Should
we always make a telephone call to the Supreme Leader? How do
we negotiate with people like that?
Sir Richard Dalton: In exactly
the way that you negotiate with other people.
Q29 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: We usually
negotiate with President Bush by going to see him, and he is accountable.
Sir Richard Dalton: There are
nominated representatives. We do not actually get access to the
Supreme Leader but we knew, for example, when for a year and a
half the Iranians honoured the agreement to suspend their enrichment
activities, that that was an agreement endorsed by him. In the
intermediate stage, the key figures to whom we could convey messages
were the intelligence establishment, the foreign ministry and
the President. We did not have direct access to the military,
but of the four main power centres that were dealing with whether
Iran should suspend, we could get messages through to three. We
reached an agreement at Foreign Minister level in Tehran in November
2003, and it was then cleared with the Supreme Leader by the senior
Iranian negotiator.
The system might not be 100% the same as ours,
but the principles behind it are similar, and it sticks. The problem
is whether the Iranians are willing to change their views on the
substantive issue. Hitherto, they have not been willing to do
that in relation to most of the issues on which we have been dealing
with them.
Dr. Hollis: If I might add, one
does not just negotiate with President Bush, or whoever is the
incumbent of the White House. There are four or five different
key figures in Washington who need to be on board in any given
situation in order for diplomacy with the Americans to be effective.
Q30 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: We heard
earlier that you could not tell us on whose authority the hostages
were taken, so the Supreme Leader does not seem to be in charge
of his own military forces. I do not think that that is an exact
parallel with the United States, where I understand there to be
a pretty clear chain of command. My worry relates, for instance,
to a potential agreement over the future of Iraq. If there are
still rogue elements who are unknown and unidentified, I am not
sure that a lot can be said for any agreement that is made with
this mysterious Supreme Leader—someone who is above the
elected President.
Dr. Hollis: Larijani will have
sorted out with the Supreme Leader the line that he will take
both on this episode and on the nuclear negotiations. He speaks
with authority on the nuclear issue, whereas the President does
not. However, he complicates the picture with his dramatic rhetoric,
his populism, and his strutting on the stage. There is a need
to unpick the messages that come out of Iran, which is frustrating,
but I do not necessarily concur with the idea that that makes
them unreliable.
Q31 Sir John Stanley: On a wider
question, could you tell us your view of the Iranian Government's
objectives in Iraq, and what political outcome they want to see
there?
Sir Richard Dalton: I believe
that they want to see a Shi'a-dominated Government in a peaceful
country which is a good neighbour with Iran. They want there to
be no American bases in Iraq in the long run, and ideally they
would like America to fail—to be perceived as having extended
its power into the middle east in 2003 and to have made a Horlicks
of it and gone away with its tail between its legs. The manner
of the American withdrawal is very important to Iran's view that
it is in an ideological and potentially military struggle with
the world's only superpower. They would see an American departure
as a triumph for justified resistance by Muslim peoples in the
region. One of their main objectives in increasing the pain for
the United States is to increase the pressure for American withdrawal.
I believe that previously the Iranians were
trying to achieve that pressure without precipitating Iraq into
a state of chaos, but I think that there is now a state of chaos
in Iraq, although that is not primarily the work of Iran. When
Mr. Negroponte said in his last National Intelligence Assessment,
in January this year, that Iran's behaviour was a factor in externally
generated instability in Iraq but not by any means the main one,
he was right. In calibrating its uses of support for violence
in Iraq, Iran is hoping to achieve the political aims that I described.
Another political aim is to show the political
actors in Iraq that they must keep on good terms with Iran, so
that there will sometimes be support for enemies of people whom
Iran ultimately wants to have as friends. For example, there is
instability associated with Iranian support in parts of the country,
such as the north, in which Iran is trying to have a good and
trusting relationship with the regional government. They want
to discourage that regional government from ever thinking of supporting
the Kurds inside Iran. They have a many-layered approach to their
policies; some they operate at a national level in Iraq and some
at a rather local level.
Q32 Sir John Stanley: I will come
to you in a moment if I may, Dr. Hollis, to put the same question
to you. I wish to ask you further, Sir Richard, when you say that
you think their objective is to have a Shi'a-dominated Iraq, can
you tell us what brand of Shi'a domination you think they are
going for? Are they comfortable with the type of Shi'a Government
that is in place now, who have signed up for the basics of western-style
human rights, rights for women and so on, or do you think that
the Iranians want a much more radical, militant brand of Shi'a
domination, represented by the militants?
Sir Richard Dalton: I think they
want a Government that works. Their interest in stability is much
greater than their interest in the particular ideological complexion
of the Government. You could argue that, in an ideal world, they
would love to have a theocracy that mirrored their own, but they
have never been able to work for theocracy in the whole of Iraq
and they have not done so, because they know that it would be
fundamentally contrary to the views of the major theological authority
in Iraqi Shi'adom, namely Ayatollah Sistani. As it is not a feasible
objective, I believe that they have been wise enough not to try
it. They would like a Government with the chance to operate on
behalf of the majority community, but ultimately success for an
Iranian policy in Iraq requires that Government to be on reasonable
terms with Kurds and Sunnis.
Q33 Sir John Stanley: Dr. Hollis,
what is your view of Iranian political objectives in Iraq? What
sort of Government structure and complexion do you think the Iranian
Government would like to see in Iraq?
Dr. Hollis: They would not like
to see Kurdistan becoming a separate state and they therefore
want a unitary state. Democracy suits them very well because it
gives power to the Shi'a majority, or that majority is able to
dominate the Government as it does at the moment.
My sense is that they are possibly unaware of
how much hostility is building among non-Shi'a Iraqis and Sunni
Arabs generally over the increase in Iranian influence in Iraq.
I find that there is a tendency among Sunni and secular Jordanians
and Saudis and Sunni Iraqis essentially to equate Shi'a Arabs
with Iranians even though they are, of course, ethnically different
and have different national aspirations.
There is a larger conflict playing out here:
the Iranian preferences for Iraq seem to me to overlook the kind
of opposition that is building to the sort of Iraq that they are
getting and the sort of Iraq that they want.
Q34 Mr. Horam: You said, Sir Richard,
that one aspect of Iranian policy towards Iraq, following the
question from Sir John, was that it would be very happy if there
were a world perception that the US had failed to come into that
area and gone out with its tail between its legs. How could the
US avoid that perception? What US policy now could you see as
avoiding that?
Sir Richard Dalton: I support
the surge. Again, it is high risk. Everybody knows that it is
going to take time to yield results and it is not clear whether
the United States domestic political timetable will coincide with
the timetable that General Petraeus is asking for. But I am impressed
by analysts who say that we will not know whether the new set
of policies is working satisfactorily until the first quarter
of next year. Whether there are enough troops in the surge to
make a real difference is another big question but I do think
it right for the United States to make a further effort to withdraw
with honour because withdrawing with honour requires stability
of a kind in Iraq and forward movement once again.
Q35 Mr. Horam: Could I come back
to something that you said at the time of the capture of the sailors?
You said that you thought that the Government had let their anger
at the way the sailors were being treated get the better of them
and that they might have gone to the Security Council too early.
I think that Dr. Hollis commented on that, but you were a bit
nervous about the earliness. How do you see that now? Do you still
stand by that in the light of what has happened?
Sir Richard Dalton: Yes, I do.
I think that building international pressure was the right thing
to do, but the pressure that really counted was the pressure in
the region, rather than what actually happened in the Security
Council. The Iranians reacted badly to our going to "our
club" for the endorsement that we were almost certain to
get and to seek to open up a front of that nature against Iran
to add to the other areas in which Iran was being, in its own
view I hasten to add, driven into a corner. I thought at the time
that there was still mileage in finding understandings based on
ensuring that things like this should not happen in the future
and that exploring that fully, before having recourse to the Security
Council, was likely to be more productive.
Q36 Mr. Horam: And you still maintain
that, even in the light of what has happened? It seems to have
worked?
Sir Richard Dalton: Yes, because
we have not yet established whether it [the access to the Irbil
Five and the release of Sharafi] was an arranged coincidence,
or whether there were aspects of the British Government's presentation
to Iran that have not yet been announced, like ways of ensuring
that incidents like this do not happen in the future and that
there are better communications respecting certain lines. These
are not questions that I am competent to answer. That is what
worked. It is impossible to say that X% of the formula which enabled
it to work was the Security Council.
Q37 Mr. Horam: Now all this has happened
and is water under the bridge, how do you think UK policy towards
Iran should change, if it should change? We understand, for example,
that a review is taking place of UK policy towards Iran. What
would you say to the people who are undertaking that review? Would
you advocate any significant changes, or should we carry on as
before?
Sir Richard Dalton: It is a very
difficult one this, because we do not have that many bilateral
levers to use against Iran. There should be some attempt to find
an area of our co-operation with Iran which is valuable to Iran
and which we can withdraw for a period in order to underline our
rejection of what they did and how they did it. So, yes, I think
that it is right—
Q38 Mr. Horam: To have a sort of
cooling period?
Sir Richard Dalton: Exactly. But
if you ask what we are doing in Iran and what we are doing with
Iran, an awful lot of it is to the benefit of UK citizens. It
is possible in such circumstances to find something to retaliate
with which is actually cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I imagine that we wish to maintain good services for British citizens
and, for access control to the UK, an effective visa presence.
We wish to maintain our programmes of co-operation against drugs.
There are Afghan issues to handle and Iraqi issues to handle.
Q39 Mr. Horam: There is not much
that we can do?
Sir Richard Dalton: I do not know.
I would find it hard to find something to do.
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