David Cameron: Iran could 'trigger nuclear arms race' In itself it is a hugely concerning development, a desperately bad development for our world and that is why we should do everything we can to top it happening. But I think there is a second reason why it is so concerning and that is because I think it could trigger a nuclear arms race across the whole region. That would consume a huge amount of resources and energy but also I think make the Middle East a more dangerous, more unstable part of the world. "So I think that for all those reasons it is right for like-minded countries to do everything they can to try to persuade the Iranians to take a different course," paying tribute to the fact that Dubai had almost entirely ended trade with what was one of its biggest trading partners. It was "perfectly acceptable" for Iran to want civilian nuclear energy, he said. The message we need to send to Iran is: there is a peaceful path; there is a path you could take that will remove the pariah status from your nation and that is to accept that you could have civil nuclear power but not military nuclear power and then we could have a proper discussion. He was also pressed about human rights and his opinion of the Arab Spring. "I am a supporter of the Arab Spring," he told the students."The idea of moving towards more open societies and more open democracies is good for the Middle East and North Africa," he went on - though he insisted that it was also important to respect individual countries' journeys. Noting that there was a majority of women among the audience, he said the UAE government was one "that takes very seriously the consent and concerns of its people." Earlier, asked whether it was appropriate for Mr Cameron to promote British arms sales to regimes which have given rise to human rights concerns, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said in Westminster: "We do have a large and important defence industry in this country. The Prime Minister is keen to see that industry prosper. That is an important thing for jobs in this country. We have very strict rules, which are regularly reviewed, on the export of defence equipment. On the subject of human rights and human rights abuses, these are issues that we consistently raise with other countries where we think there is a need to do so. But what governs defence exports and the export of defence equipment is the strict rules that are in place, and we apply those. Mr Cameron also repeated his criticism of the United Nations for failing to get member states to agree some form of joint action over Syria, where tens of thousands of civilians have died in the civil war. He said: "In the case of Syria the UN has let the world down. That is really because two of the permanent members, Russia and china, have not been prepared to see a strong resolution that condemns what President Assad has done to his own people. I worry that when the history books are written, people will look back and say: why couldn't we do more when we knew twenty, thirty, forty thousand people lost their lives?