Debate contribution: Illegal US and Israeli Attacks on Iran

Debate contribution by Mr Doug Beattie MC on 16 March 2026.

MLA

Mr Doug Beattie MC

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

16 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Illegal US and Israeli Attacks on Iran

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5449186

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that there is no shouting at me, as I am deaf in one ear and do not hear great. I am not surprised that there is a bit of Brit-bashing being thrown into the debate, as that is always the case. We seem, however, to forget — Members over there have certainly forgotten — that Irish airspace and Shannon Airport have, for many years, been used for the movement of personnel, equipment and ammunition from the United States to the Middle East and north Africa. I do not see Members on the other side of the House standing up to complain about that. Neutral? Really? It is worth noting that, in Congress in 2002, the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee placed the IRA in a global terrorist network along with Iran. There is clear evidence and intelligence of a link between Hezbollah and the IRA. Released state papers show that even the Irish Government had concerns about Iran's backing of the IRA. I therefore have to ask what the motives are behind motion and whether Sinn Féin is willing to declare an interest. It is really important not to see this as a Trump war. If we see it as a Trump war, we would change our opinion every 20 minutes; that is just the nature of the man. We have to analyse it far more deeply. Nobody wants war. It comes at us in many varied and complicated ways and for many varied and complicated reasons. This is a limited and targeted conflict to stop what would become a regional conflict, something that Iran is desperate for. Make no mistake: it is not a regional conflict now. We will know when it is. Iran is not an innocent victim responding to aggression: that is just strategic fiction. The reality is that the Islamic Republic of Iran bears substantial culpability for the present conflict. Its guilt is not merely over retaliatory strikes but over a deliberate, decades-long strategy of escalation through proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) literally travels the globe exporting terrorism. It is a doctrine that is known as "forward defence". By creating conflict and destabilisation in other countries via global terrorism, it creates internal defence. It relies on Russia and North Korea for support, and that tells us all that we need to know. The attacks by the US and Israel on 28 February were not the starting point of the conflict. Iran has been destabilising the region for decades and has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons along the way. Members should take their mind away from intercontinental ballistic nuclear weapons: we are talking about small, tactical, battlefield nuclear weapons that can fit in a suitcase.

Iran's aim is to be the dominant force in the region. Under its dominance, Israel would not have a right to exist. It is worth noting Iran's systemic and deeply institutionalised human rights abuses against its own people, in particular women. The regime enforces mandatory veiling through laws such as the Noor plan. It uses surveillance and has a violent morality police, which makes clandestine arrests and even targets girls as young as 15, in order to suppress dissent. Women face state-organised discrimination in their legal status, employment and education. Activism is often criminalised as foreign agent activity. The crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom movement has been brutal. So, I cannot shed a tear for the Iranian regime, but I can shed a tear for their people, who are being oppressed by that regime. UN experts have documented the use of lethal force, torture and sexual violence against protesters, with thousands, including children, killed in recent protests alone. Collectively, those documented patterns, including recent mass killings, have led UN investigators to conclude that some Iranian state actions "amount to crimes against humanity". The prosecution of the war, not the reasons for it, are of concern. We have seen limited aims and shifting mission statements, which have led to Iran's taking the limited economic initiative of closing the Strait of Hormuz. The US was not wrong to go in, but it did not go in with a clear plan. The closure of the strait is not a defensive action; it is a global reaction. It is economic terrorism, and it has an effect on people across the globe through increased fuel costs. One of the questions that we have to ask —.

Yes, of course. In-depth planning should have been done, and there should have been a clear set of aims for what they are trying to achieve. That is about the prosecution of the conflict. That is not to say that it was not right to go in and take Iran to task for what it was doing: destabilising the region through decades and decades of global terrorism. One of the questions that we have to ask ourselves is this: why were we not prepared? It is not that it has not happened before. We had fuel shortages after Russia invaded Ukraine. The destabilisation in the Middle East over the past three years has led to such shortages. We knew that that was happening, yet we were not prepared. Now we are complaining and trying to do crisis planning in Northern Ireland because fuel prices have gone up. We should have looked at that. Our First Minister, given that she is the First Minister, should have looked it. It is incumbent on the US and Israel Administrations to end the conflict as soon as possible. While prosecuting it, they must adhere to the laws of armed conflict. We hear the term "war crimes" being thrown about as a strapline. That is all it is. People use it as a strapline, and it disgusts me when they do so. However, it is still a breach of the laws of armed conflict. Administrations have to adhere to the laws of armed conflict. The US and Israel are no different from anybody else. Just so we are aware, terrorists are also bound by the laws of armed conflict. All wars and conflicts end in negotiation. I hope that the situation in the Middle East de-escalates soon. I hope that the fighting stops. I hope that the protagonists can get around a table and start to negotiate. It is in the hands of Iran to stop global terrorism and to stop exporting it. It is in the hands of Iran to stop trying to gain nuclear weapons. It is that simple.

Iran could do that tomorrow. In truth, it needs to do it tomorrow, because it is the Iranian people who are suffering during the conflict.

We can stand here and complain as much as we want to, but it will not make a bit of difference to what is going on in the Middle East — not one bit of difference. It might make us feel good, but it will make no difference there. Nobody wants war. It is not a video game. I do not want it. I have been there; I have seen it; and the people who suffer most are the innocent civilians. They are suffering. They are suffering across the region — in the Gulf States, in Iran and in Israel. The sooner we get an end to the conflict, the better, but the bottom line is that Iran cannot be allowed to continue doing what it is doing, and we cannot let global terrorism hold us all to ransom.

1,258 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Flagged Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

Most of the speech is a substantive argument about Iran's conduct, its treatment of women, the prosecution of the war and Northern Ireland's lack of preparation for fuel price rises, which on its own would be ordinary foreign-policy debate. However, it opens by dismissing opponents' arguments as "Brit-bashing" and mocking Irish neutrality ("Neutral? Really?"). It then sets out claimed links between the IRA, Iran and Hezbollah in order to ask "what the motives are behind motion" and whether a named party "is willing to declare an interest". That passage maps the foreign conflict onto Northern Ireland's communal divide and insinuates that the motion's supporters are driven by past terrorist links, which fits the rubric's description of tying one tradition's politics to terrorism.

Public interest or divisiveness

The bulk of the contribution engages with substance: human rights abuses, the laws of armed conflict, the Strait of Hormuz and local fuel-crisis planning. Alongside this, a deliberate passage turns the debate into a communal point-scoring exercise by linking the motion's sponsors to the IRA and Iran rather than answering their arguments. Both elements are substantial, so the effect is mixed.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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