‘Many thousands’ of people from NI in Middle East at risk from Iran – deputy FM

By Claudia Savage, Press Association

It is believed there are “many, many thousands of people” from Northern Ireland in countries in the Middle East being targeted by Iran, Stormont’s deputy First minister Emma Little-Pengelly has said.

Little-Pengelly also said that stability in the Middle East “does not come from indulging extremism and terrorism”.

Iran and Iranian-backed militias have fired missiles at Israel and Arab states, apparently hitting the American embassy compound in Kuwait, while Israel and the US pounded targets in Iran as the war in the Middle East expanded.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said the US-Israeli air strike campaign that began at the weekend has killed 555 people in Iran so far.

Cyprus said a drone attack targeted a British base, RAF Akrotiri, hours after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that American forces would be allowed to use British bases to strike Iranian missile sites in response to the barrage launched by Tehran against countries across the Middle East.

Around 300,000 Britons are believed to be in countries targeted by Iran, with 102,000 registered with the Foreign Office for updates as officials examine all options, including a potential mass evacuation.

Little-Pengelly told BBC’s Good Morning Ulster she had received a “high level security briefing” on the situation as she urged people from Northern Ireland working in or visiting the region to make themselves known on relevant registration schemes.

Asked how many Northern Ireland citizens were in the area, she said: “The registration is incredibly important, so people can find out real time information from those official sources.

“So it’s very difficult to disaggregate the number, but we do know that it is in the many, many thousands of people.

“I’ve been contacted by family members over the weekend, whether their family members or loved ones are there, either working on holiday, of course, a high level of concern and apprehension for them.

“So we want to do, I want to do, absolutely everything I can to get the information through to people.”

Asked what the implications may be for Iran in the wake of the US strikes, Little-Pengelly said “the reality is that it’s not just a bad regime for Iran, it was a bad regime for the region”.

“It was sponsoring terrorism, it was sponsoring instability, the Prime Minister has made clear that it was also supporting domestic terrorism across the UK, and I’m sure that that was the case across many different countries,” she said.

“Unfortunately, the reality is that stability in the Middle East does not come from indulging extremism and terrorism, but you’re absolutely right that lessons do need to be learned from previous experiences.

“I think everybody wants to see peace and stability break out, particularly in the Middle East, where, of course, we’ve been very conscious for a very long time about what that stability could mean.

“So of course, the UK Government must do everything that it can to try now to stabilise but at the moment, they are in the middle of a conflict situation, our UK armed forces are operating in a defensive way to try to protect.

“Iran is hitting back, we’ve seen that play out over the last number of days and in a very indiscriminate way that is absolutely wrong.

“So we need to be very clear on what side of this that we fall down on and not in supporting a murderous and terror supporting regime.”