Starmer’s position on Iran pleases no one, but that is because there are no good options | Rafael Behr

IIt’s not easy being Donald Trump’s friend, but it’s much less dangerous than being his enemy. There isn’t a huge range of options between the two. The war in the Middle East reveals how limited the British Prime Minister’s choices are.

The US president does not view alliances as long-term relationships based on mutual benefits, but as ongoing transactions on a mafia model. The boss offers protection in exchange for tribute and loyalty.

This is a problem for all European democracies. For decades, their security has depended on a conception of Western solidarity – institutions, values ​​and laws – that Trump despises. For Great Britain, self-exiled from the European Union and acculturated to a “special relationship” with Washington, this is a crisis of geopolitical orientation.

Keir Starmer’s shifting position on US military action in Iran sums up the problem. At first he refused permission to use British military bases, apparently on the grounds that there was no legal basis for the war.

The regime in Tehran is certainly murderous. Most of its victims are Iranians themselves. The Islamic Republic is also determined to harm the United States and destroy Israel, but there is no evidence of any imminent action in pursuit of these goals to justify preemptive strikes. The most pressing motive appears to be that Trump is seeking international thrills because his domestic political revolution is running out of steam.

Within days, Starmer changed his position. Tehran’s “scorched earth” retaliation – firing missiles at US-aligned countries in the region – is putting British resources and civilians at risk. To avoid this danger, the RAF bases would still be involved, but only in the interest of “collective self-defense”. British forces would not join in “offensive action”. The lessons of the war in Iraq will not be forgotten, the Prime Minister said on Monday.

The diplomatic and legal intricacies of Starmer’s position make sense as they aim to balance conflicting domestic and international pressures. But no one is satisfied. His stance toward the war is reluctant, but not opposed. He is obliged to honor the letter of the transatlantic alliance, but not with the fighting spirit that Trump and his fellow travelers on the right of British politics demand.

Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have unhesitatingly supported attacks on Iran. The Conservative leader accuses Starmer of using international law as an excuse to do nothing. Her real concern, she says, is appeasing “those groups whose political loyalties in conflicts in the Middle East do not align with British interests”. The conclusion is that Labor MPs with large Muslim communities in their constituencies are desperate for the government not to fight alongside Israel.

This may be a factor in some places, but in her warrior culture Badenoch’s zeal misses a larger point. Ill-conceived, open-ended and speciously justified military adventures, undertaken at the behest of an enthusiastic US president, are unpopular with a wide demographic of British voters.

Expressing this distrust is an easy political victory for Zack Polanski and Ed Davey. The Greens and Liberal Democrats rightly point out the risks of a spiral of regional conflagration, all the inauspicious historical precedents and the improbability of creating a less tyrannical Iran from a smoking bomb crater.

The warnings are salutary and the criticisms relevant, but the policy recommendations are superficial. Davey wants Starmer to “phone” Trump and force him to plan a transition to Iranian democracy. Polanski urges Prime Minister to condemn US action.

So what? The default anti-war position is to assert the superiority of negotiated agreements over military conquest. This was also Starmer’s preference. But the United States has already abandoned negotiations and assassinated Iran’s supreme leader. The world in which Trump is regulated by the phone calls of a British prime minister and chastised by his denunciations exists only in the realm of opposition fantasy.

In reality, Starmer must carefully deploy the influence he has with the White House. He must consider other strategic objectives – the need to keep Trump on his side in Ukraine, for example. And he must keep in mind that Britain’s military and intelligence capabilities are closely linked to Pentagon systems. It’s something the prime minister alludes to whenever he’s pressed to state his political differences with Trump. This is what he means when he talks about the “indispensable” nature of the defense partnership. In private, ministers are more frank. As they say, Britain would be “massively exposed” if a wayward US administration decided it no longer wanted our friendship.

The dangers of getting on Trump’s bad side aren’t often discussed, because no one is encouraged to admit such a colossal vulnerability. For right-wing Brexit supporters, it is ideologically inconceivable that having a seat at the top table of a continental European bloc has amplified British power. The idea of ​​a relationship with the EU as a safeguard against excessive dependence on Washington is even less tolerable.

After struggling to free themselves from the shadow colonization of Brussels, Reform UK and the Conservatives are stuck in a policy of total submission to Washington – vassals in trade, mercenaries in war.

On the liberal left there is frustration with dependence on a rogue superpower and impatience with realignment with Europe. But there is also reluctance about what this implies in terms of defense and security. The corollary of seeking foreign policy autonomy in a dangerous and unstable world is having hard power capabilities that Europe failed to develop in the decades Washington supported it.

Polanski is calling on Britain to wean itself off its dependence on the United States and has speculated on the possibility of leaving NATO in favor of a more Eurocentric alliance. Nor does he call for higher defense budgets to replace capabilities that would be lost in the event of a break with Washington, and which would be needed – and already are needed – to deter Russian aggression on the continent’s eastern flank.

Strategic autonomy in the face of a Trumpified United States is not an illusory ambition for Britain, but it is a costly project. This requires uncomfortable decisions that opposition leaders, especially those with a negligible chance of becoming prime minister, can easily gloss over.

This is not an option for Starmer. He may not be able to strike the right balance between Europe and the United States – between asserting an independent foreign policy and maintaining valuable diplomatic capital in Washington – but unlike his critics, he faces the distressing reality of these dilemmas every hour of every day. It is the nature of politics that he ultimately suffers for making bad choices, but history perhaps shows that he did not have good ones at his disposal.

• Rafael Behr is a columnist at the Guardian

• Guardian Newsroom: Can Labor get out of the abyss?
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