BRITAIN MUST BACK IRAN’S DEMOCRATIC FUTURE

The new Burnham Government faces a foreign-policy test that cannot be postponed. Iran is no longer simply a difficult diplomatic problem in a distant region. The Islamic Republic poses a direct threat to British citizens, British shipping, British energy security and Britain’s strategic interests across the Middle East. For almost half a century, Tehran has exported terrorism, financed armed proxies, taken British and dual-national citizens hostage, plotted assassinations on European soil and threatened international shipping. Its destabilising reach extends through Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and armed militias across the region. The Houthis have already demonstrated how an Iranian-backed force can disrupt international commerce.

The first duty of the Burnham Government should therefore be to abandon the fiction that Britain can manage this crisis through condemnation and periodic diplomatic accommodation. It should develop a distinctly British strategy based on strength, deterrence and support for the Iranian people. Nowhere is this more urgent than the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway is one of the world’s critical maritime arteries. Any sustained Iranian attempt to close or control it would threaten global energy supplies, drive up prices and disrupt international trade. Britain, as a major maritime trading nation, has a direct national interest in keeping Hormuz open. The Government should therefore declare freedom of navigation through the Strait a British national-security priority. The Royal Navy, working with Gulf partners and international allies, should have a clear mandate to protect international shipping. Any Iranian attack on British vessels, citizens, diplomats or military personnel should be treated as an attack on Britain itself.

The same firmness must apply to hostage-taking. Tehran has repeatedly treated British and dual-national citizens as bargaining chips. That practice must end. The Government should adopt a zero-tolerance policy, making clear that Britain will never reward hostage-taking with political concessions. Britain should also use one of its greatest strategic assets against the regime, the City of London. Iranian money-laundering operations, front companies, procurement networks and financial channels must be pursued relentlessly. Sanctions should focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), regime financiers and the criminal networks used for assassination, kidnapping and terrorism. Humanitarian assistance to ordinary Iranians should remain protected.

But pressure alone is insufficient. Britain needs a political strategy for what comes after the Islamic Republic. The crucial distinction is between the Iranian people and the regime that oppresses them. Iranians are suffering from economic mismanagement, corruption, collapsing purchasing power and extraordinary inflation. Yet successive nationwide uprisings have demonstrated that the desire for fundamental change runs deep. The present weakness of the regime creates an historic opportunity.

This is where Britain should show political courage. The Burnham Government should invite Mrs Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), to address meetings in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Mrs Rajavi has addressed countless parliamentary and political meetings across the European Union and has become one of the most prominent international advocates for a democratic Iran.

Her importance lies not merely in her international profile. She represents the best-organised democratic opposition movement capable of helping Iranians fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of the theocracy. The PMOI/MEK’s Resistance Units are active inside Iran, while the wider National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has spent decades developing the political structures and programmes required for a transition. Mrs Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan provides a clear foundation, popular sovereignty, free elections, separation of religion and state, gender equality, minority rights, abolition of the death penalty and a non-nuclear Iran.

Britain should listen. Inviting Mrs Rajavi to Westminster would send a powerful message to the Iranian people that Britain recognises their future belongs to them, rather than to the mullahs in Tehran. It would also demonstrate that London is prepared to engage with a democratic alternative instead of endlessly negotiating with the regime responsible for the crisis. This is hardly an act of recklessness. A democratic Iran would be profoundly advantageous to Britain. It would remove a principal source of terrorism and regional instability, end Tehran’s support for armed proxies, reduce the threat of hostage-taking and state-sponsored assassination, strengthen Britain’s Gulf partners and open extraordinary opportunities for British trade, investment, energy, education and scientific cooperation.

The Burnham Government should therefore pursue ten practical objectives. It should defend freedom of navigation in Hormuz, establish credible deterrence against attacks on British interests, intensify targeted financial sanctions, end the hostage-taking business model, protect Iranian dissidents in Britain, dismantle Iranian criminal and intelligence networks, maintain maximum pressure on the IRGC and regime apparatus, give explicit political support to the democratic opposition and Mrs Rajavi, make democratic, secular government the strategic objective, and begin preparing now for the transition to a free Iran.

Britain possesses the tools to do this. We have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, world-class intelligence services, the City of London, a global diplomatic network, the Royal Navy, NATO and Five Eyes – the intelligence sharing network. The question is whether we possess the political will to use them. The Burnham Government has inherited an opportunity as well as a crisis. It should seize it. Britain’s objective should be neither war for war’s sake nor another temporary bargain with Tehran. It should be the emergence of a peaceful, democratic and secular Iran chosen by the Iranian people themselves.

The mullahs have spent decades testing the West’s resolve. The time has come to test theirs. And the first signal should come from Westminster. Invite Maryam Rajavi to Parliament, listen to the democratic opposition, and make clear that Britain stands with the Iranian people and their aspiration for freedom.