UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be
published as HC 496-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
Foreign Affairs Committee
Global Security: Iran
Wednesday 2 May 2007
SIR RICHARD DALTON KCMG and DR. ROSEMARY HOLLIS
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 -
54
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the
Foreign Affairs Committee
on Wednesday 2 May
2007
Members present:
Mike Gapes (Chairman)
Rt hon. Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory
Mr. John Horam
Andrew Mackinlay
Mr. Ken Purchase
Rt hon. Sir John Stanley
________________
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir Richard Dalton KCMG, Ambassador to Iran 2002-06, and Dr. Rosemary Hollis, Director of
Research, Chatham House, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: We
have before us two people whom we know very well, Sir Richard Dalton and Dr.
Rosemary Hollis, and we are just beginning an inquiry that will look at
Iran. We thought that it would be
helpful if we focused initially on the recent captives crisis and the events
surrounding it. I am conscious that,
because of the election timetable, some of my colleagues are not here
today. Nevertheless, we have a quorum,
and I am sure that we will be able to cover all the territory.
Would
you both set out how you saw the objectives of the Iranians in capturing and
detaining our marines and sailors? Why
did they do it? What were they trying
to achieve? What was their purpose and
did they meet their objectives in doing this?
Sir
Richard Dalton: We do not know.
We do not know what their objectives were because we do not know who
took the decision. There are three
options. The first is that the system
decided that it wanted to make an example of the British and this was the way
to do it using its constitutionally decreed arrangements, ratified if necessary
by the supreme command of the armed forces, Ayatollah Khamenei. At the other end of the spectrum, it might
be that local commanders decided that this would be a good thing to do; they believed
that they had mounted a successful operation against the British in 2004 and it
was a good time to do it again. In
between those two options, it could be that the commanders thought that it was
a good idea and checked it with their military superiors, who had a quiet word
with somebody on the political side who said, "Well, go ahead and do not worry;
the system will back you up after you have done it." We have no evidence that I am aware of publicly to choose between
those three options.
Speculating
about their motives, I think that they wanted to show that they were tough and
ready to repel anybody who wanted to aggress against their territory, so they
had a general objective of showing military determination. Secondly, they wanted to taunt the British,
who are regarded as enemies, particularly in the revolutionary guard and in the
higher clerical circles. The target was
one that they would have spotted because they keep an extremely close watch on
what goes on, and they would have concluded that for low military cost they
might well be able to make a significant political demonstration against the
United Kingdom, their habitual enemy.
There
might have been feelings to assuage because they-particularly in the
revolutionary guard-had been on the receiving end of some setbacks, such as the
arrests in Irbil by the Americans, with five of the revolutionary guards'
associates kept by the Americans. There
had also been a high level probable defector, Mr. Asgari, which was a blow to
their pride. The Revolutionary Guard commanders may have thought that it was a
good time to show that they could not be taken for granted and were ready to
defend their position. Speculation about who took the decision and what their
motives were is beside the point. The system took up the action as soon as the news
came through to Tehran that the captives had been taken and it ran with it.
Within a matter of minutes or hours, it became a system-wide exercise.
Q2 Chairman: We
will go into other aspects of that in a moment, but have you got anything to
add, Dr. Hollis?
Dr.
Hollis: I go along with everything that Sir Richard has said about the
options over how it originated. I concur totally that once it had started, the
system was going to play it for all it was worth. I would add that the Iranians
seem to have a propensity to play on a very large battlefield and to try to
have as many options in the air as possible. While it is not actual warfare, it
is a sort of asymmetrical warfare. That fits in with Iran's own rhetoric in
which it said that, "If the Americans attacked us, they would be mistaken if
they assumed that we would retaliate with missile attacks on US assets in the
region. We have many other ways of making their life difficult." That episode
fits nicely with Iran's sense of its place in the region. It has multi-faceted
relationships in the region and multiple opportunities to make its presence and
position felt.
Q3 Sir John Stanley: Sir
Richard, will you explain why you appear to rule out a fourth option, namely
that it was retaliatory action for the taking into custody of certain Iranian
personnel and, if the media reports are to be regarded as authentic, for the
news that more would be taken into custody in Iraq by Iraqi security forces and
the US?
Q4 Sir Richard Dalton: I certainly do not rule that out. I said
that they wanted to assuage their feelings that had been sorely hurt by that
action. It could have been a direct retaliatory action on the grounds that the
UK would be a softer touch than getting directly at the United States.
Q5 Chairman: In
your answer earlier, Sir Richard, you referred to the regime taking on the
issue and using it. In an article that you wrote a few weeks ago, you said that
the Iranians appear to have been improvising rather than working on an overall
diplomatic plan. Could you summarise how the Iranian diplomacy worked once they
had taken it on in the way that you described?
Sir
Richard Dalton: I do not know any of the inside story. You would have
to ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to give you a good answer to that
question. It was clear, as in the case of the capture in 2004, that the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran had to play catch up to find out which
units were holding those people and why, what the line of communication was and
what the view of the political leadership was of the action taken to capture
them. How matters evolved in that interplay of the different actors in Tehran
is, in my experience, always shrouded in mystery. They keep their counsel very
close. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a faithful expounder of an agreed
line, but does not take a foreign embassy into its confidence about what line
is being taken by which players in the preparation of that agreed line.
Q6 Chairman: A
question for both of you: do you feel that the Iranians now regard the way in
which they handled our personnel as sensible?
I refer to their use of confession, televising, and the threats that
were made to the personnel. In
retrospect, might they think that perhaps they should not have done that?
Dr.
Hollis: If I may say so, I think that the Iranians deemed it a pretty
successful manoeuvre from start to finish.
It ended happily, and at the right time. They had sent messages, they had tested to see how far they could
go and they regrouped when they came up against the limits of that. I dispute the argument that they made at the
time of the release of the personnel to the effect that, had Tony Blair not
taken the issue to the Security Council and to other members of the European
Union, it could all have been resolved sooner. The fact that they said that was indicative of the careful
manoeuvres in which they were engaged, and it justified their position. However, by taking the issue to the UN Security
Council and to fellow EU members, the British in effect raised the stakes, but
also established-for all to see-the extent of support that they were likely to
receive. They demonstrated to the
Iranians that they were not a pushover.
Sir
Richard Dalton: I broadly agree with that. I would add that it was a very high risk strategy for the British
to go to the Security Council at the time that they did. Making a large public fuss is rather
different from making private representations to allies and regional neighbours
of Iran. The more one uses publicity
and the international pulpit, as it were, the higher the value of captives to
some of the extremists in the Government whom one is trying to influence. The fact that the release of Faye Turner was
aborted as a consequence of going to the Security Council shows the degree to
which a risk existed.
In
addition to the EU partners, who I suspect would have been prepared to go into
reverse in some of their dealings with Iran had the issue remained unresolved
after a period of time, the key influences on the Iranians were, I think, the
regional ones. As Dr. Hollis said, a
major Iranian objective was to show power in the region, yet they had a stream
of phone calls from all their regional neighbours, saying, "Please bring this
to an end."
Q7 Mr. Horam: Why did
the Syrians take the line that they took?
They made it plain that they were against the Iranian position. Why would they do that?
Sir
Richard Dalton: I do not think that they made it plain publicly. There have been articles suggesting on the
basis of Syrian briefings that the Syrians were pleased to help. That would fit with the Syrian wish to make
it plain to the west that it is not a country to be put into the doghouse and
isolated, in the way that might be associated with US policy, but rather is a
reasonable country, that can be dealt with.
Putting a good word in would have been a logical course as part of the
Syrian campaign to rehabilitate its image.
Q8 Mr. Horam: That is
part of its wider game plan.
Sir
Richard Dalton: Yes.
Q9 Mr. Horam: Do you
agree, Dr. Hollis?
Dr.
Hollis: I do. The Syrians saw
it as an opportunity to demonstrate that they could be useful. I think that they capitalised to the extent
that the US official Nicholas Burns, talking this morning about US-Iran
relations, mentioned the Syrian Foreign Minister Mr. Muallem by name as one of
the players who will be present with neighbours of Iraq and other interested
parties in the next two days of diplomacy on reconstructing Iraq. Given during Mr. Burns' presentation this
morning on diplomacy with Iran, I remark that as an indication that the Syrians
have quite successfully reinserted themselves in the regional game.
Q10 Chairman: May
I take you back to the issue of how the release was arranged? Was it as a consequence of the internal
power struggle within the regime? Sir Richard, you said originally that we do
not know why they were taken. Why were
they released when they were and why do you think that Ali Larijani decided to
go on Channel 4 News? Was that part of
the power struggle or was it for other reasons?
Sir
Richard Dalton: There is a power struggle for influence in foreign
affairs between Dr. Larijani and President Ahmadinejad. It could be that Dr. Larijani spotted an
opening to insert himself, not only to solve a problem for Iran but to show
that he can deliver, which could be relevant to his standing in Iran. We need to step back a little and ask
ourselves why the Iranians decided not to put them on trial, which was touted,
as you know. There are precedents for
taking people who have transgressed the sea borders of Iran-it did not happen
in this case, but it has happened in other cases-putting them on trial and
sentencing them for quite long periods.
It was always a distinct possibility, but, speculating again, it would
appear that the Iranians concluded that to put them on trial would prolong the
issue to Iran's disfavour and, as Dr. Hollis said, it had got all it was going
to get out of the issue after a couple of weeks. At that point, there was scope for a pragmatic international
actor, as Dr. Larijani is, to a degree, to step in.
Dr.
Hollis: I agree that there is a power struggle. I was taking soundings as much as I could
from Iranian contacts, including those in Iran as the situation unfolded, and
my sense is that President Ahmadinejad was persuaded to stay out of this until
he was given the opportunity to do the theatre at the end. In the internal power struggle there was a
division of labour and Dr. Larijani felt to me to be very much in charge at the
other end of the overall direction that it was going to take. As one Iranian described it to me, the
President's reward for not trying to hijack the issue was the drama at the end.
Q11 Andrew Mackinlay: My
questions are for both of you. You gave
us possible reasons, or options, but one that you did not mention-it comes
later in my brief, but I will touch upon it now-is the dispute about whether
the Royal Navy was in internationally agreed Iraqi waters, in that area that is
blurred or in dispute, or in Iranian waters, and I want to link this to the
Security Council. As I understand it,
we went to the Security Council seeking condemnation of the taking of our
people, and so on, but other members of the Security Council, particularly the
Russians, were not prepared to say that these were Iraqi waters. It strikes me that they had an unexpected
bonus because the Security Council did not do what the United Kingdom wanted it
to do with regard to the location. That
was a point to Iran, and it could pump the air. I am concerned that we did not
do our preparation before we went to the Security Council in order to know what
other Security Council players would sign up to. It seemed to me that there was a diplomatic failure or error by
us and the Security Council. If the
Chairman will allow it we may also come later to the matter of whether
internationally other people agree about the status of these particular waters
and the location of our RIB craft. I
want to bounce that off you both, because it seems it was a bit clumsy in New
York.
Dr.
Hollis: Sir Richard called it a high-risk strategy. I admit that I felt
at the time that it went as far as it could with the Security Council because
not only did the Iranians learn that the British would have support, but the
British learned the limits of that support. The silver lining was that not
endorsing the British claim about where exactly the British vessel was
presented the opening for the resolution of the crisis. Both sides could agree
that it is a sensitive area, in which one has to be doubly careful, and there
is some value in closer engagement to ensure that misunderstandings do not
happen in the future.
Sir
Richard Dalton: I shall add to that by saying that I do not believe
that the we are talking, for practical purposes, about disputed waters. An
enormous amount of shipping goes up and down those waters, and there have not
been any similar incidents-at least, they have not been publicised. That is
because it is very much in the Iranian interest to respect the international
acquis, even if it is informal, as to where the border is.
When
we had difficulties with the Iranians in 2003 over movements by their forces
toward and beyond the Iraqi border, I took the issue on instructions to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It stoutly maintained that Iran's policy was to
respect the commonly accepted borders in order that there could be a proper
negotiation in due course with an independent Iraqi state, at which the borders
would be fixed once and for all at what, for Iran, would be a relatively
favourable situation-that with which it was left after the Iran-Iraq war in
1988.
The
reason why the Iranians did not contest where the UK said the line was in the
northern waters of the Persian gulf was that it did not wish to set up an
irritation in its relationship with Iraq that would make the maritime border
harder to deal with.
Q12 Andrew Mackinlay:
This is a very important point. The British Government's position was that the
waters were indisputably Iraqi. You said that there was a modus vivendi by
which merchant shipping was let go, as happens in an awful lot of waterways
around the world that are subject to opposing claims. I think that you have
concurred with my feeling that, in fact, the waters were disputed, and that the
Government would have known that. There might well have been a custom and
practice that craft of all nations could go into the waters and that that would
not be an issue. It became an issue the moment that somebody wants to say, "You
are in our waters-in our bailiwick".
Sir
Richard Dalton: I would not agree with that. Only if two parties to a
border dispute it can we say that a border is disputed. Neither Iraq or Iran is
disputing the line that exists on the Admiralty charts that are used by 90 per
cent.-[Interruption.]
Q13 Andrew Mackinlay:
Whose Admiralty?
Sir
Richard Dalton: Our Admiralty. The charts used by the British Navy are
the charts used by 90 per cent. of the world's shipping, I am told. At the time
of the incident, neither Iraq or Iran was disputing the line. There is a lack
of clarity in international law because there is no treaty between the
sovereign Governments of Iraq Iran to define the line. Royal Navy policy was to
leave a 1 km buffer zone between an operation and the commonly accepted and
undisputed line in the Persian gulf because of the possibility of mistakes.
They were outside that self-imposed buffer area by 0.2 km.
Q14 Mr. Purchase: Could I just remind you
that on 2 April Ali Larijani said there was no need to proceed with the trial,
on 3 April Jalal Sharafi was freed in return to Tehran and on 4 April Iran was
told it could have access to the five detainees from Arbil? The Secretary of State for Defence, Des
Browne, said there was no deal. You
suggested, Sir Richard, that there was a firm refusal, both in public and private,
to pay a price. Not that I want to
spoil the Prime Minister's tea party on his 10th anniversary, but he also said
there was no deal and that it happened without any negotiation or any side
agreement of any nature. Does it not
seem a bit of a spin to suggest that there was no negotiation and no side
agreement-yet on 5 April the lads were out?
Dr.
Hollis: I do not know whether spin is at work here. I think the word "negotiation" could be
interpreted in different ways. I think
what was meant was that there was no negotiation in the sense that there was no
concession made and no demand and therefore no responding concession. I think there was a great deal of diplomatic
activity-some might call that negotiation-around the issue. It could well be that there is nothing to
hide here. It is a success.
Q15 Mr. Purchase: They are
free, sure. It is a success. But credibility is stretched a little-isn't
it?-when we have these closely related events of what appears to be recanting
on two positions, then the next thing the lads are out but there was no deal.
Dr.
Hollis: Wait a minute. You are
talking about the service personnel recanting.
Q16 Mr. Purchase: No, I am
talking about the five detainees from Arbil.
We gave the Iranian authorities access to them.
Dr.
Hollis: I am sorry. I was
connecting it back to the business of where they were in the territorial
waters.
Q17 Mr. Purchase: I am
sorry if I misled you. Perhaps I did
not provide a full enough description of the events. On 4 April, Iran was told it could have access to the five
detainees from Arbil.
Sir
Richard Dalton: I think what is happening here is that there was a very
helpful coincidence, but how it arose I do not know. My hunch is that it arose out of UK-US diplomacy rather than
US-Iran diplomacy or UK-Iran diplomacy.
It is an obvious thing to do to ease the path of an Iranian climbdown
for consular access to be given to these US detainees in Arbil. It is a small step towards normal
international practice by the United States Government and is actually very
welcome on its own merits.
The
return of Mr. Sharafi is even more of a mystery. He is the second secretary from the Iranian embassy in Iraq who
had been kidnapped. There is no
evidence linking the United States authorities with that. But he was returned to Iran in the course of
the exchanges between the UK and Iran about the Royal Navy captives. It seems to me to have oiled the wheels.
Q18 Mr. Purchase: In the
middle of all this, on 3 April Nigel Sheinwald had a telephone conversation
with Mr. Larijani. The whole thing
seems to me to fit together for a negotiation-with people saying, "We'll do
this if you'll do that."
Dr.
Hollis: Wait a minute. If you
look at the Jon Snow interview with Mr. Larijani-
Q19 Mr. Purchase: On
Channel 4?
Dr.
Hollis: Yes. Larijani gave lots
of information without demands. It
seems to me that a lot of information was being passed among all the players
who got involved, some publicly and some behind the scenes. Deductions were
made as to what would smooth the path of diplomacy. I am not trying to defend
anybody's position, but I recollect that watching it unfold was like watching a
carefully choreographed dance.
Mr. Purchase: I am happy with the
outcome. It seems faintly ridiculous that we should deny, or that it should be
denied, that anything was done to enable the happy release of our sailors to
take place.
Q20 Chairman: Can
I rephrase the question? Is it not
really that we had sequenced, unilateral steps such as confidence-building
measures rather than a negotiation?
Sir
Richard Dalton: It could be. It is not the same thing.
Chairman: It is not. Therefore, you could say that there
was no negotiation, but you could also take unilateral steps, or get your
allies to do so, to help build confidence in order to secure the release.
Q21 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.
Q22 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.
Q23 Chairman: But
it is a fact that we do not have the boats back. The Iranians still hold them.
Sir
Richard Dalton: Yes.
Q24 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.
Q25 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.
Q26 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.
Q27 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.
Q28 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 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, had 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.
Q29 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.
Q30 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.
Q31 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.
Q32 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 the 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 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.
Q33 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 Iran and they have
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.
Q34 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 possible 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.
Q35 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.
Q36 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 do not happen in the future and that exploring that fully,
before having recourse to the Security Council, was likely to be more
productive.
Q37 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 established whether it was an arranged
coincidence, whether there were aspects of the British Government's
presentation to Iran that have not been announced, like ways of ensuring that
incidents like this do not happen in the future and 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.
Q38 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-
Q39 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.
Q40 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.
Q41 Mr. Horam: Would you
agree, Dr. Hollis?
Dr. Hollis:
Yes. I would also say that we had one
or two indications that there was not a well worked out negotiation that was
direct, back and forth, because the Foreign Secretary was, convincingly,
advising everybody to expect the release to take a lot longer. I got the impression that the release came
sooner than Ministers were expecting.
As I said earlier, Jon Snow intervened in a way that smoothed the path
for the conversation between Sheinwald and Larijani. All of these things indicate to me that the British did not
overreact, but that there were moments of extreme nervousness when they might
have done. They were being baited; they
were being invited to get much angrier and embarrass themselves; and they
managed to avoid doing that. The
multiple lines of communication that were set in motion produced the
result.
What
do we deduce from that? For the future,
we deduce that there is a chance of another complex situation emerging,
especially given the British position in southern Iraq and Iranian feelings
about the British and Iranian connections into southern Iraq. The chances of something spinning out of
control in the future are great.
Therefore, for those reasons, I would say that Britain needs to move
forward with the greatest caution.
Q42 Andrew Mackinlay:
What has troubled me over the past couple of years is that we seem to have been
sending mixed messages of variable degrees of indignation to Tehran. I would buttress that comment by saying that
the Prime Minister, frequently at Prime Minister's Question Time, has linked
the ordnance armaments and deaths of British soldiers-you know, suggesting that
the smoking gun goes back to Iran. He
has consistently done that, and Defence Secretary Reid did that, too. However, if one looks at Foreign Secretaries
Straw and Beckett, they have been much more fudging of this, as have their
junior Ministers-Kim Howells, for instance, has said different things at
different times. Is not part of the
problem that we are not singing with one voice in Whitehall at ministerial
level? As I say, we are sending mixed
messages. Is that comment fair, or have
you identified that problem?
Sir
Richard Dalton: I have not been following what Kim Howells has been
saying, or what Margaret Beckett has been saying, as closely as you have. I apologise for saying this, but it was
certainly not the case up until March, when I left Tehran, that there were
mixed messages going out. What the
Prime Minister was saying was reflected in the more detailed work of officials
such as myself. As for what has
happened since then, what do you think, Rosemary? Have mixed messages been sent?
Dr.
Hollis: I think that in the diplomacy triangle between the United
States, Iran and the UK, what the British Prime Minister has said is
important-it was much stronger on keeping the option of force on the
table. There would be no invasion-he
said that repeatedly-but he did not rule out the use of force. That was a big contrast to Jack Straw and,
as you know, there were some theories that that was one of the reasons for
moving Jack Straw. Now, one could
rationalise it as good cop, bad cop, but the fact that the Prime Minister has
taken the stand that he has is the key issue, from my point of view.
Q43 Andrew Mackinlay:
I would like to ask a final question on this subject. In recent weeks, it seems to me that, overall, the Iranian
Government regime is now emboldened by events.
The dust has settled, as it were, so what say you to that?
Dr.
Hollis: Some members of the regime may be emboldened. I have said before that I think that they
are over-confident about their regional situation and how events such as this
play to their advantage. However, I am aware of a lot of Iranians who are
embarrassed, especially by the behaviour of their President in the episode. I
am also aware of Iranians who think that they sent out a signal, although I do
not believe that it has been received.
They think that the signal that they sent was, "This is how to deal with
the nuclear issue: use complex lines of communication; not step-by-step 'I give
you this, you give me that' negotiation but putting a number of items on the
table, moving them around, discussing, and then arriving at a joint
conclusion." They think that they sent
that message in the way in which they handled the business with the British,
and that that message is therefore there to be taken up in terms of a new
gesture from the EU3, the British and the United States on the nuclear issue.
Sir
Richard Dalton: I think that is too convoluted. I do not think that there is a direct link
between this issue and nuclear diplomacy.
The naval matter is inherently a rather small issue. It certainly did not humiliate the UK, and I
do not think that the Iranian system, at supreme leader level, would regard it
as a major act of state that the messages could be applied across the board for
Iranian diplomacy, other than the very general ones, "We can kick back too,"
which we knew anyway, and "We will defend our borders," which we knew anyway,
too.
I
do not think that that is going to embolden the Iranians. All the lines of policy action that they are
pursuing now in matters that are highly disobliging to the rest of us-in
Lebanon over the middle east peace process, or on terrorism, the nuclear issue
or Iraq-were set long ago. It was under
President Khatami in his last days that the negotiating approach pursued by the
P5 and Germany on the nuclear issue was firmly rejected.
Andrew Mackinlay: Another thing, Sir
Richard-
Chairman: This will be your final
question, Mr. Mackinlay.
Q44 Andrew Mackinlay:
I apologise. I am on a roll. Are you satisfied as to the robustness of EU
sanctions-just the robustness, not necessarily the prudence-in relation to
materials going to Iran? Things often
have a dual use. For example, during
your time in Iran, some zirconium silicate was held up in Bulgaria on behalf of
the EU. That can be used for various
parts of the nuclear process. Sanctions
have been increased, but are the EU and the UK really serious about them, and
are there any flaws or deficiencies in the process?
Sir
Richard Dalton: It is not being done resolutely enough. To achieve success in nuclear diplomacy,
should the Iranians decide to negotiate once more, we need four things, and at
present we have only about one and a half.
The first of those four things
is a proper vision leading to some form of process for a regional security
arrangement. The second is a set of
firmly articulated incentives to Iran-that is the "one" that I said we already
have, and there is a lot of that in the May 2006 proposal, but it could be
improved in negotiation. The third is a
set of real disincentives, and this is the answer to your question.
The
permanent five and Germany are placing huge emphasis on international unity in
approaching Iran, in order to give Iran no excuse to try to divide the powers
and international institutions with which they are dealing. That has worked, and there is a very firm
consensus. However, the cost of that
international unity has been weak measures, only slowly applied. So far, those who argue in Iran that, with
just the tightening of a belt or two Iran can see this one out, have a lot to
point to. The final thing that we do
not yet have, although the Americans are moving gradually in the right
direction, is the prospect of serious negotiation between the United States and
Iran on a bilateral basis.
Q45 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Can we turn to the performance of the
British sailors and marines and how they were used in Iran? Clearly, the Iranians were fortunate to have
a group of people who turned out to be very compliant and did more or less what
they were asked by the Iranians and, indeed, thanked their captors on their
release. Whether that was due to poor
training, morale or a more fundamental problem of discipline in the Navy, we
want to find out from the inquiry when it reports. How do you think that it has come across in the middle east? Is it a symptom of a lack of western resolve
or a loss of military determination?
The pictures that were flashed all around the world cannot have done our
reputation much good. What are the
diplomatic and military implications?
Sir
Richard Dalton: Can I pass that question to Dr. Hollis?
Dr.
Hollis: Some Iranians have tried to exploit an aspect of this in terms
of, "The British are not as strong or
as frightening as they used to be," but they have not succeeded totally in
making that story stick, in part because those in the region at least know how
complicated and muddled the situation is.
I have described it twice, so I shall not do it again. The very complex context within which the
personnel were taken means that it is not a clear-cut case that they should
have behaved in a certain way, come what may.
That said, the overall effect was not of professionalism.
Q46 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I
find that response quite extraordinary.
In my limited contacts with people overseas who saw the photographs,
they thought, "Well, what has happened to Britain's senior service; what has
happened to Nelson's Navy and to British military personnel, who used to hold
their heads up high and walk out with their uniforms on?" We would not have thanked our captors in times past. Are you saying that the general collapse in British morale was
already played out in those areas, and that this came as no surprise? I am genuinely asking you, because that
conflicts with my anecdotal experience when talking to people from overseas who
did not quite understand how it had happened to the Royal Navy.
Dr.
Hollis: I do not think that I am disagreeing with you as much as I
appear to have done. In terms of
professional conduct, stiff upper lip, withstanding pressure and, in
particular, having one woman among them, the events did not do the British
reputation any good at all-quite the contrary.
However, it is long since that the British are seen as weak and as
merely helping the Americans. The
general perception in the region is that the Iranians would not have dared take
the Americans, because they would have been clobbered if they had. We then point out that, if we had clobbered
the Iranians, what good would that have done in terms of getting the service
personnel back safely? We enter a
discussion in which I say there is some level of understanding that the British
may have handled this in such a way as to extract their personnel. Did Britain have a very high reputation for
strength and for being a power that you don't mess with before that? No, it did not have a very high reputation.
Q47 Chairman: May
I take you to a different international reaction, which was touched on
earlier-the remarks by John Bolton? He
strongly criticised the British approach, and said that we were pusillanimous,
weak, and various less polite adjectives.
He said that the Iranians had won a great victory. How much do you think Bolton's view is the
view of the US Administration, and how much is it John Bolton being John
Bolton? Given that the Americans were
so quiet early on in the crisis, was it because we told them to be quiet and
they listened or because they did not regard it as being of great significance?
Dr.
Hollis: I think it was John Bolton being John Bolton. I heard, with conviction, from American
service personnel, that they wanted the British to hang tough, not to get
agitated and not to overreact, and that this could all be resolved
peacefully. That was from the US
military directly engaged in Iraq.
Sir
Richard Dalton: I think John Bolton was trying to keep alive the dying
neo-con agenda for dealing with Iran.
He was not approaching this from the point of view of a diplomatic
problem that had to be solved, or, rather, a problem that had to be kept
diplomatic if at all possible rather than spilling out into anything much
worse. He was looking at it purely from
the point of view of his idea of geopolitics and the handling of Iran. He and his ilk never established any link
between how they would like to have seen Iran dealt with and getting the
sailors back.
Q48 Chairman: I
also want to take you to the Security Council.
The British Government did not get quite what it wanted in terms of the
Security Council resolution. Was that
because the Russians watered it down?
If so, does that mean that Russia can continue to play that role, in
effect softening international pressure on Iran on the nuclear and other issues
for the future? Is that likely?
Sir
Richard Dalton: Russia looks at each issue on its merits and decides
what its own national interest is in relation to that issue. On this issue, it was not prepared to side
either with Iran or the UK on exactly where the capture took place.
Q49 Chairman: Why
would Russia prefer to be perceived to be assisting the Iranians rather than
supporting the UK? Is it because
Russia-UK relations are so difficult or for other reasons?
Sir
Richard Dalton: It does not surprise me; I do not know the exact
reasons in this instance. Nobody gets a
blank cheque from Russia nowadays.
Q50 Chairman: Dr. Hollis, do you have a view on that?
Dr.
Hollis: I am not sure what the Russians' motive was.
Sir
Richard Dalton: On where the Russians are on the nuclear issue
generally, I think they are in the right place. They are maintaining their willingness to consider an offshore
enrichment facility in which Iran would have a serious interest, and
international agreements would guarantee Iran access to the product of that
facility for power reactors in Iran, as and when they are built. Secondly, they are aware that Russia
bilaterally has leverage with Iran and they are willing to use it, for example
in connection with bringing the Bushehr reactor on stream. Thirdly, on general sanctions, they are
going to have an eye to their own trade interests, but it should be possible to
get them to agree a third round of sanctions, provided that it does not impact
too much on Russian traders.
Q51 Mr. Horam: Sir Richard,
you said in your article in The Daily
Telegraph that Britain's reputation for fairness and for understanding the
middle east must be restored. How could
we go about that? You might disagree
that it has such a reputation anyway, Dr. Hollis-from what you said, it
appeared that you thought it was rather weak these days.
Sir
Richard Dalton: The first thing to do is to recognise that there is a
problem and to adjust our performance on middle east issues so that it is more
in line with our pretensions. We should
not talk about making a major effort to help resolve the middle east peace
impasse unless we actually have something to do and something to say that will
really contribute. Secondly, on the
detail, we need to recognise that the boycott of the Palestinian Government has
not been a success. Thirdly, we need to
promote a move as soon as we possibly can to dealing with the fundamental
issues around the final status of an independent Palestinian state, living in
security with Israel. Those are the
three main points to which I would draw attention.
Q52 Mr. Horam: And as
regards Iran? Has anything positive
emerged that could be helpful to UK-Iran relationships?
Sir
Richard Dalton: I do not understand the question.
Q53 Mr. Horam: Has anything
positive emerged? We have had talks,
for example, between Sheinwald and Larijani.
Has anything positive emerged out of all of that that we could build on
to have a better effect on Iranian politics?
Sir
Richard Dalton: No, I do not think it has. The evidence for that is Margaret Beckett saying that there has
to be a review to see whether our relationship, as currently constituted, ought
to be continued or modified. If the
Foreign Office and No. 10 felt that something positively positive had emerged, there
would be a different sort of language.
Q54 Mr. Horam: The Prime
Minister has said that he thinks that something positive has emerged, because
of the contacts that have been made at an individual level between UK and
Iranian personnel. Presumably, he is
thinking about the talks between Sheinwald and Larijani, for example. You would not agree with that, then.
Sir
Richard Dalton: Access to Mr. Larijani has not been a problem in the
past. Face-to-face access has always
been possible, as with his predecessor, Mr. Rowhani, and, as Sir Nigel
Sheinwald is going to Washington, I am not sure whether we have gained much.
Chairman: I think that we must call an
end here. We will be taking evidence
later this month on the Iranian nuclear issue, and, to touch on your final
points, Sir Richard, we will also be pursuing wider middle east questions.
Thank
you very much, Dr. Hollis and Sir Richard Dalton. The meeting is concluded.
