This is a key moment in the war on Iran – and Starmer must resist the UK being dragged into it any further | Simon Jenkins
Iis this the turning point? A deranged American president and an Israeli prime minister facing prosecution seek to drag the world’s armies into the stupidest war of the 21st century. The Israeli strike this week on Iran’s South Pars gas field was clearly aimed at provoking an Iranian retaliation so massive that it would guarantee a fierce response from Donald Trump. The escalation is therefore announced. This is how small wars become big.
There is only one way to stop. It is up to Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran. Yet both leaders clearly see themselves as trapped. Trump, who already claimed to have won the war, now feels alone. Although he has assembled the largest aggressive force in modern times, he begs his former allies to come and provide moral support. But Trump started this war. He must face the injury to his pride that could accompany his cessation. He must then accomplish the more difficult task of getting Israel to stop too.
Meanwhile, Britain should play no role. His safety is not threatened at all. Whatever harm Iran poses to British interests, war is not the answer. Nor is it Britain’s duty to judge and replace foreign regimes, a task in which its recent record is deplorable. How to contain modern terrorism may be a long-standing challenge, but aerial bombardment offers no answer.
Yet Keir Starmer is sending top military planners to Washington to help Trump plan the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. This assumes there is no agreement from Iran to reopen peacefully. This is in addition to the fact that Britain has already made British bases available to American bombers, ridiculously for “purely defensive purposes”. It is through this shift towards collaboration that George W. Bush trapped Tony Blair in Afghanistan and Iraq. We could talk about strategic seduction. Starmer must not take the same path that led to more than 400 British soldiers dying in Helmand.
Trump claims Britain owes a debt to the United States in return for Washington’s nuclear deterrence against Soviet Russia under NATO. This shows how incoherent international defense jargon has become, where “national security” casually justifies any action, no matter how disproportionate. Trump maintains that Iran has become “an imminent nuclear threat” to the United States and is “weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon.” It was as false as Bush’s similar claim about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Trump himself boasted about the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites during the bombing of Iran last June.
These arguments are easily lost at times like this in the military rhetoric beloved of right-wing politicians and macho commentators. It is a world of shock and awe, existential threats, multilateral responses, military targets and collateral damage. This supposedly justifies the aerial killing of thousands of innocent people. The only winners are the military, defense lobbyists and populist demagogues. It is their songs that have called nations to war throughout the ages. Their songs are the best – at the time.
Starmer now finds himself in exactly the predicament that should have been ruled out after the British Suez fiasco in 1956. Then an attack on Egypt to assert British control of the Suez Canal failed to topple the regime in Cairo. It ended with Washington telling British Prime Minister Anthony Eden that he had gone mad. Britain accepted the message that its imperial action was coming to an end, but it was reluctant to withdraw completely. It cannot consider itself as just another European country minding its own affairs. The overseas bases remained, as did the desire for intervention.
So, 70 years later, Britain still finds itself spending millions on its “defense” in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean. Imperial memorials in Cyprus and Diego Garcia inspire leaders, as Blair would say, to “punch above their weight.” Britain joined the Iraq war supposedly because of an “imminent threat” simply to its base in Cyprus. As for the latest quarrel over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, it is more than absurd.
This is why Downing Street still craves the phone call from the White House, the special relationship, the tariff agreement, the exchange of intelligence. When the United States commits an illegal act or a monumental mistake, Starmer feels he cannot respond, as other European leaders have done, and condemn Trump without reservation. He hesitates nervously.
Two weeks ago, there may have been an argument for considering Israel’s decapitation of the Tehran regime to be in the same category as Trump’s toppling of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela in January. This could be explained as an overnight operation with a planned and limited outcome. The last three weeks have not seen such a result. The war is now endless.
As it stands, last week I changed my mind on whether the King’s state visit to Washington should go ahead. There should not be an outright cancellation – this was about celebrating a bond between people, not between governments – but that certainly cannot happen while Trump’s aggression continues. The British monarch cannot be seen shaking hands with such a violent man.
The bombings must stop. Right now, nothing else matters.
