Before I discuss the issue of the Middle East, I preface my comments with reference to the consular response to our citizens who have been stuck, indeed trapped, in the Middle East. Our consular response has been really good. We need to remember our missions are not set up or orientated towards the mass evacuation of citizens or people stuck in transit. There will be difficulties and we hope people will remain safe. We will continue to work and keep pressure on to ensure we have flights out of there but the evacuation of people is a very difficult situation. The setting-up of the crisis group here centrally has been a good thing and the lines of communication, at least for us, to the Minister's office at the Department of foreign affairs have been good. It is a situation that is almost beyond words and description. Deputy Ahern and I will have 15 minutes between ourselves to try to put our words to this crisis and situation in the Middle East, but we have never before been faced with this kind of conflict or war that is being exercised in the first instance by the United States and Israel upon Iran. There are no angels or good guys in this war. Iran's tyrannical regime is just that. It is an abhorrent regime with extrajudicial killings and the systematic oppression of women, the LGBTQ community, dissent and political opposition - the list goes on. It is an horrific regime. What Israel and the US are doing is the breaking of international law. The Minister's opening comments were the strongest she has made in terms of condemning the Unites States and Israel and saying they have no mandate or authorisation from the UN, which is de facto saying the attacks and the war are illegal without actually using those words. It is important we use those words. One of the most important things the Minister said in her contribution was, "Ultimately, the future of Iran must be determined by the people of Iran and in a way that creates stability in the region." In the first instance, it should be about creating stability, democracy and peace in Iran, which would then have further positive impacts for the region, but I will return to that. We are where we are in this horrific place because of the actions, predominantly, of Donald Trump and the Israeli Government. The international anti-nuclear weapons regime has been successful in keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon through negotiations, the IAEA, the United Nations and sanctions. It is not easy, and Iran has been pushing and pushing towards developing a nuclear weapon, but negotiations have kept that at bay to this point. Negotiations were taking place and agreements were in place and Trump, being the tin-pot hard man that he is, ripped them up, and look where he is now. He has begun a war that has no strategy or concept of what victory would look like, such as victory in any war can be. He is taking on a country that is unconquerable. It may be next to Iraq but it is not Iraq. Iran is a country of huge mountain ranges and high plateaus. It is absolutely unconquerable. This President, with Israel, has begun a war for which there will be no end and no peace negotiations that we can see. That he is going to continue to rain missiles such as those that, on day one, killed over 160 girls in a school in Minab brings a sense of despair to all of us that there is no concept of how this can be ended in any possible way. I commend Pedro Sánchez on providing leadership within the European Union and calling this war what it is, an illegal war. We should be following that leadership. We in Ireland should be using our experience of bringing peace to our own island. We should be the voices, the amplifiers and the accommodators of what could bring peace to Iran. I know the Minister has invitations to meet credible groups of democracy grassroots networks in Iran. We cannot believe that the answer to this war will be whoever is left from the revolutionary guard that Trump will want to cut a deal with. We cannot believe it will be Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, who presided over a decades-long corrupt regime and is now a poster man for the far right and is being endorsed by people like Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage. Real democracy will come from the grassroots, from the new political groups in civil society and from the women and feminist networks that are operating under the most appalling oppression to try to provide some hope for the people of Iran. They have nobody articulating support for them in our part of the world. If we are to be productive, proactive and positive in some way and if Donald Trump will not listen to us when we call a halt and want a ceasefire, we can engage with these groups as a country that is militarily neutral, but not politically neutral. We do take sides, and we will take sides with those who believe in peace and those who believe in democracy. They are there. They are buried on the fringes of Iranian society, but they are there and they need a voice in our part of the world. We have to be that voice. It is a very dark time. We are in the midst of the intensity of missile fire and continued attacks. Iran has now thrown its missiles out, causing further destabilisation in the region, such as in the Emirates, where we have so many citizens and where people are living is under attack. I hope the UAE, which has positioned itself internationally as one of the safest places in the world but has continued to support violence in Sudan, will now look at its own foreign policy and realise it is not the safest place in the world and can be subject to attacks like anyone else. I hope it will ask itself what it is doing around the world. They need to look at themselves and pull back and help bring peace to Sudan, which they are destabilising and where they are participating in the killing of so many thousands of people. This has and will continue to overshadow what is going on in Palestine and the killings that continue in Gaza and the spread by Israel into the occupied territories. We cannot allow that to fall off the agenda. Our comments on Lebanon and our history with Lebanon have been strong and we need to push back to support the UNIFIL mission, which is unfortunately on the wind-down again because of US and Israel pressure. People are now fleeing Beirut in mass numbers because Israel is on the march. Ireland has a big voice. We do not have military power and nor should we. We are a militarily neutral country, but we have a political voice and we are not politically neutral. We should be calling out breaches of international law when we see them, and we are seeing them with the United States and Israel. We should be a voice. We have expertise on this island that can engage with people on the ground. Even in countries such as Iran that are shut down, we can be proper pro-democracy voices, not agents of what the United States may view as regime change. We know what real peace looks like. We know how difficult it can be. We know how long it takes. We know the hard yards. We can bring a bit of our experience, even in the darkest of times. I ask the Minister to look at the invitations on her desk and to meet with the people who can make a difference to the future of Iran. We should not be sharing shamrock in a couple of weeks’ time. It feels almost trite to say it because in the overall scheme of things it is not that important, but the symbolism is. No one in Ireland at the moment feels that Donald Trump is a friend of ours or a friend of global peace. In fact, he is not. I ask that at this stage we reassess our approach to that St. Patrick's Day visit. Our thoughts are with all the victims who are living under intense bombardment and facing death on a minute-by-minute basis in Iran and throughout the Gulf region. We should do everything we can to articulate a true path to peace.

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