Iran hasn’t earned the right to bear arms

Hard though it is to remember now, 2020 began with a very different dark cloud on the horizon. For a week or so it looked as if the West’s cold war with Iran would burst into full-scale conflict. The assassination by US forces of Iran’s revolutionary guard leader Qassem Soleimani on 3 January sent oil prices soaring and raised fears that President Trump’s reputation as a war-monger was finally to be deserved.

As we now know, the crisis fizzled into nothing. In retaliation, Iran halfheartedlyfired missiles at a couple of air bases in Iraq where US forces were stationed, killing no one. Donald Trump announced ‘all is well’ and, as he had already done with North Korea, succeeded in de-escalating a crisis which he was widely believed to be escalating.

Do we really feel that the world would be a better place if Iran had access to Russian missiles and Chinese tanks?

Yet, as government scientists keep telling us about Covid-19, Iran hasn’t gone away. Indeed, as the world worries about a resurgence of the virus, the issue of Iran seems to be erupting into its own second wave of the year. It now presents the UK government with its first foreign-policy challenge of the post-Brexit era.

In 2015, when the US was still under Barack Obama’s management, the UN Security Council passed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Under the terms of the deal, Iran was to be subjected to a five-year embargo on the trade in conventional arms, but this is due to expire next month. Trump would like this to continue, and to that end triggered a clause in the agreement called ‘snapback’, which reimposes the ban on conventional arms sales. The trouble is that Trump withdrew America from the JCPOA two years ago, enabling other signatories to dismiss Trump’s move as un-enforceable.