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Hello, I'm Susan Hume.

This is the yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Monday, the 23rd of June, the Commons was gripped by escalating events in the Middle East.

A defence minister was due in the Commons Chamber yesterday evening

to make a statement about security at military bases in the UK,

but suddenly it was the safety of personnel overseas that Luke Pollard was worried about.

Members of the House will be aware of the newsbreaking in Qatar of reports of explosions

at 1935 local time. This is a fast changing situation and we are monitoring it closely.

And he was in a hurry.

I'm sure you'll understand that I'll be trying to keep this statement short to return to the

department to be fully briefed. Well, the first hint of retaliation by Iran for the US airstrikes

at the weekend had come a couple of

hours earlier when the Foreign Secretary David Lame had said in his statement to the Commons

that British people in Qatar should take shelter. He was at pains to stress that the UK was not

involved in the attacks by either the US or Israel on Iran, but Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

He didn't quite say if he thought military strikes would prevent that.

We don't yet know precisely how far the US strikes have set back Iran's nuclear program.

But there remains the need for a durable, diplomatic solution. Strikes

cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to

deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon.

His conservative shadow Dame Priti Patel agreed that Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear

...