Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Undebated by the government is the foreign minister's tilted Australian policy towards Iran. Every Monday, including this Monday, the members for Wakefield and Canberra insisted that the foreign minister come into this parliament and debate her turn in foreign policy.

I remind the House that she proposed an intelligence-sharing agreement with Iran, urged her Western counterparts to cooperate militarily with the Teheran regime and even canvassed in the media the benefits of increased trade and diplomatic representation with that country. These concerns remain and are over and above the considerable and legitimate worries I have about Western—including Australian—enthusiasm for the Iran nuclear deal.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is a flawed document. Its internal contradictions and lack of clarity are well known. For instance, the one and same document contains the Americans much-touted 'snap back' provision, along with the Iranian position that any reimposition of any sanctions will see Iran free from the obligation to continue undertaking its commitments. Iran put a gun to the head of this deal and, if Iran breaks its word and the US acts by snapping back sanctions, it will free to walk away. Tehran's escape clause is there in black and white in JCPOA.

Recent analysis by Yigal Carmon, the head of the Middle East Media Research Institute, said:

The JCPOA is best characterised by ... bold prohibitions on Iran that peter out in qualifying terms such as 'unless', 'except if', and the like.

If negotiating the document symptomise craven Western compromise, the pattern is being continued in the deal's farcical implementation. At least the US Congress had a debate on this; Australia has not even had the courage to debate its autonomous sanctions regime and whether they will be withdrawn.

The treaty with Iran gave each party 90 days to obtain agreement from their national parliaments. However, rather than approve the document, the Iranian parliament—known as the Majlis—only approved instructions on how to implement the nuclear deal. We look the other way—the West—and pretend that Iran has agreed. It has not.

Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran makes all final decisions and he has not endorsed the deal. The closest he came was in a letter on 21 October, in which he said that his approval of the nuclear deal was conditional on the West meeting nine new conditions. So here we have a situation where the supreme leader unilaterally changes the terms of this international agreement. What do we hear from Secretary Kerry, the UK's Hammond, or Germany's Steinmeier? The silence of the supplicant. That is why the US has been so willing to look the other way in the face of constant Iranian efforts to embarrass the West, which I will return to in a minute.

In just the past few weeks, Iran has committed at least two brazen acts in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions that should merit consideration for new sanctions, let alone the abandonment of old ones. The test firing of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead was boastfully shown on Iranian television. Moreover, we have had the deployment of a further expeditionary force by Iran to support the blood soaked regime of Bashar al-Assad. Forget the US, Germany, Britain or France: does our foreign minister even know about these blatant violations? However, destabilizing Russia's military deployment in Syria may be, it does not appear to violate a UN Security Council resolution. The Turnbull government is just like its predecessor: silent, compliant, abject—new show bag; same contents.

The guts of Supreme Leader Khamenei's changes make his approval of this deal impossible, because one of the conditions is a lifting of sanctions before Iran implements its side of the bargain. This is completely opposite to what was agreed in Vienna by the P5+1. So, while Putin establishes control over the Middle East, we march shamefully past deadlines and agreements—all apparently for nothing.

Under this agreement, Iran had until 15 December to implement its obligations. These include shipping over 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium to third countries, leaving only 300 kilograms; removing most of its centrifuges and placing them under the lock and key of the International Atomic Energy Agency; and filling in the core of its Arak reactor with concrete. They will need to have a lot of activity in the next month to achieve this A report from Reuters overnight indicates that the tepid moves Iran was taking have been stopped, because they say they are moving too fast.

The big test will come on 15 December, when the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to report on Iran's implementation of its obligations. What will we do when the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has not complied? I know what we should do, but unfortunately it seems most of the people in the West, including current Australian government will shift and fidget, and find ways of meeting the new Iranian demands— (Time expired)