Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she opposes a ban on arms sales to Israel — claiming Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
The Wigan MP made the comments at a Jewish Representative Council (JRC) meeting in her hometown of Manchester on Wednesday.
She said neither she nor Shadow Middle East Minister Wayne David "support the blocking of the sale of weapons to Israel that helped it deflect rocket attacks" during May's Israeli offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip, adding: "Israel has a right to defend itself and Israel's citizens have a right to live in peace and security".
"We have to be very cautious in relation to Iran", Nandy said. "This is a state that is still using... developing nuclear weapons, that has shown no signs of dropping their hard-line approach".
Nuclear Deal
Claims by Israel — the only country in the Middle East that reportedly has nuclear arms — that Iran is trying to get the bomb have proven a political obstacle to US President Joe Biden's stated intent to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal with Iran, which his predecessor Donald Trump officially withdrew from in 2018.
The JCPOA saw sanctions on Iranian oil exports imposed in 2006 lifted in return for access to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwah or religious judgment against nuclear weapons in the 1990s, and has restated that position several times since 2003. But in January, the government began enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile material content — not pure enough for a nuclear weapon but above the level used in most power stations.
Iran's new conservative President Ebrahim Raisi has taken a much harder line with Washington's readmittance to the JCPOA than his predecessor Hassan Rouhani.
Nandy also backed the Conservative government's decision to boycott this September's 20th anniversary reconvening of the World Conference Against Racism held in the South African city of Durban in 2001, saying: "We shouldn't be supporting the promotion of anti-Semitism".
The Israeli and the US delegations walked out of the 2001 conference in protest even after they had forced the removal of criticisms of Israel from the final declaration.
Solidarity Denied
The frontbencher also accused unnamed individuals of exploiting the Palestinian struggle for statehood to "spout hate and divide people".
Britain's Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is organising protests against next week's annual Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair at London's ExCel convention centre, under the slogan: "Stop Arming Israel".
Young Labour chair Jess Barnard tweeted on Tuesday that party officials had informed her PSC was effectively barred from the Labour conference in Brighton at the end of September — along with former leader and Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ordered Corbyn's suspension from the party and its parliamentary group last November after he challenged an Equality and Human Rights Commission report alleging Labour was riddled with anti-Semitism.
Nandy told Wednesday's meeting that Luciana Berger, one of six Labour MPs who defected to the now-defunct anti-Brexit Change UK party, should be readmitted and promptly selected as a parliamentary candidate.
"I want her in parliament because she is one of the best MPs we have ever had", she said of the Jewish former party member.