Sir Keir Starmer has urged Israel and Iran “to step back and reduce tensions urgently” as Britain seeks to act as peacemaker and avoid a wider regional war. The UK simply can’t afford to be dragged in.
The Government is set to call a Cobra meeting later today [Friday] to discuss the unfolding conflict, The i Paper understands. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who cancelled a visit to Washington DC to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, spent Friday morning hitting the phones, speaking to international allies and Middle East capitals.
The temperature needs to be reduced. And not just between Jerusalem and Tehran. Increasing tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump have been evident. While the US negotiates a nuclear deal with Iran, Trump advised the Israeli Prime Minister to delay any action. That was ignored.
It was clear to the Israelis that they had a window of opportunity, perhaps while Trump was distracted by the Los Angeles riots or doing a deal in Ukraine. The annihilation of the main Iranian proxy Hezbollah last year, when Israel blew up the pagers and radios in the pockets of operatives, was the first step in Israel’s campaign.
This time the Israelis ran out of patience after the latest report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities. It both confirmed the existence of three previously undisclosed nuclear sites in Iran and found traces of nuclear material. Even so, Israel’s highly targeted strikes showed this attack had been long in the planning.
Currently, the White House is making a public show of non-involvement in the military action, suggesting it plans to avoid this fight for now. What’s going on behind the scenes is more frantic. The Israelis said there was “full and complete coordination” with the Americans ahead of the attacks. The sentiment was not echoed in Washington. The British Government was also not informed in advance of the attacks, The i Paper understands.
Last year, a similar situation unfolded: Israel escalated regional conflict, while the US tried to manage the consequences, supporting Israel but avoiding direct involvement. This latest attack will likely follow a similar pattern.
Even so, however hard the US tries to say it wasn’t involved, the act of letting the raid go ahead will be seen as an act of complicity in Tehran.
But it’s not just diplomatic involvement that draws the UK in. According to Marcus Solarz-Hendriks, Head of the National Security Unit at the Policy Exchange think-tank, the UK’s defensive capability makes it an actor in the wider response to the crisis.
“Britain is certainly not powerless because we are engaged actively in the defence of Israel, one of our regional partners,” he told The i Paper. “We have British aircraft in the skies in Iraq and Syria intercepting Iranian drones on their way to Israel. That is meaningfully altering developments, because if one of those ballistic missiles that we shot down had got through and hit a civilian site in Israel, that would have totally changed the game. However, we are not one of the powers driving developments; that’s in Iran, Israel, in the US.”
In the short-term British diplomats in Tehran will be braced for any fallout from the strikes and possible civilian protests. Iran has a history of lumping Britain in with the “great Satan” that is the US. But Israel and the US will be Tehran’s main targets in the first instance. In Jerusalem and other strategic points across Israel, officials will be looking to the sky and wondering how robust their iron dome defences are.
The Iranian military fired 100 drones at Israel this morning as the opening salvo of its expected retaliation, which it claims will be “harsh and decisive”. How many more and where they land will drive events in the next few days.
Tehran’s retaliation is a question of where else the drones land – Arab gulf states or US military bases? That could alter the course of this current flare-up. Dragging the US in would not end well for Iran. Trump warned Tehran to strike a deal and “save what was once known as the Iranian empire”.
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There are other, medium-term consequences. Iran has already pulled out of planned nuclear talks with the US in Muscat this weekend. Iran could also react by speeding up its nuclear programme. It could withdraw its cooperation with the IAEA. An even bolder step would be to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty entirely.
But the wider question is what the Americans do to help defend Israel. Starmer is right to call for de-escalation; wars follow the laws of unintended consequences.
“The UK will probably want to take a lead from the US,” Bronwen Maddox, Director of the Chatham House think tank said. “If President Trump is angry at what Iran does, tells it to desist and takes steps to reassure the region, the UK will find it easy to support that. If the US appears to have given tacit licence, the UK may well want to make further statements itself to call for calm in the region. It will almost certainly say something to back the diplomatic talks that have now been interrupted and to call for calm.”
The issue will now hang over the G7 meeting in Canada. The gathering, which starts on Sunday, had been expected to focus on energy security and the digital transition. Instead, Middle Eastern politics will undoubtedly hijack the agenda.
For the Brits, overleveraged in Ukraine, and struggling to meet Nato’s future spending demands for European security, the nightmare scenario is being dragged into a Middle Eastern war. No wonder Starmer is so keen to play peacemaker.
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