Prime Minister Christopher Luxon walks back comments ‘any action’ on Iran is ‘a good thing’

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he misspoke when he said “any action” to stop the Iranian regime would be “a good thing”.

At Monday’s post-Cabinet press conference, Luxon repeated variations of the “any actions” line to reporters, including “any actions to stop them from sponsoring terrorism is a good thing” and “any actions that stops them from killing their own people is a good thing”.

On Tuesday, Luxon admitted the comments were a misstep.

“I think I misspoke on that. I meant action rather than any action,” he told reporters on the way to his Caucus meeting at Parliament.

“I think the example was raised to me about carpet bombing and clearly that is not what we want to see but you know we are supportive as we have been, under successive governments, around making sure that Iran doesn’t get its hand on a nuclear weapon.”

On Saturday (NZT), the United States and Israel launched missile attacks on Iran which killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated with strikes against its Middle Eastern neighbours, including the United Arab Emirates, and US bases in Qatar and Bahrain.

Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters are yet to say whether they believe the strikes were legal under international law. Attacks made in self-defence can be legal in certain rare circumstances but the United States has not published evidence an attack was imminent.

Luxon said the US and Israel would have information and intelligence that formed the basis of their strikes, but as he had not seen that, he could not make a call on the legality of the strikes.

He said he “can’t make bold assumptions” and New Zealand “cannot jump to a conclusion one way or another”.

Peters, who is travelling in Argentina, said “we all have views” but added: “I’d like to have international, highly-trained, qualified legal minds decide and not have a whole lot of people unqualified rushing in and giving their view.”

“I’m prepared to wait for what their pronouncement is as to its legality, I think it’s a wise precaution for us to take.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who yesterday said he was “somewhat shocked” by Luxon’s comments, told reporters today it was good the Prime Minister had clarified his stance.

“I think words matter ... and in this particular instance words matter a great deal. Adherence to international law shouldn’t be a matter of discretion – it should be something we expect all countries to adhere to."

Hipkins said the Government should take a “principled stance” and voice its opposition to the bombings “because it is a violation of international law”.

“New Zealand has a lot of reasons to want the rest of the world to be adhering to international law.”

Iranians in New Zealand: What’s the visa situation?

Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford addressed the options for Iranian citizens in New Zealand who have a visa that is about to expire. She urged people in this scenario to contact Immigration New Zealand.

“We’re taking a similar approach we take when anything like this happens overseas, very pragmatic, and we’ll be making sure that we keep people legal here as long as we can if they can’t get home,” she said.

“We always do that and we will continue to do that.”

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.