Is the United Kingdom at war with Iran or not?
At first blush, this may seem like a simple yes or no question. But depending on whom you ask, the answer varies wildly. According to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the answer is a resounding “no” — for an obvious reason: his Labour government does not want to be drawn — or at least seen to be drawn — into another disastrous West Asian war, especially given its already anaemic levels of public support.
On Wednesday, Starmer began a televised address by laying out his ongoing opposition to the US-Israeli war on Iran and his steadfast refusal not to be drawn into the conflict:
There has been a good deal of pressure on me to change my position in relation to joining the war. I am not going to change my position on the war. Whatever the noise, I am the British prime minister and I have to act in our national interest.
Starmer maintains his, to put it politely, nuanced position that while the UK is in a deep state of logistical and kinetic integration with the US-Israeli war on Iran, allowing the US to use British territory and overseas bases as logistic hubs for its operations — for purely “defensive” purposes, of course — it will not be drawn into the wider war.
Starmer has come under pressure to engage more fully in the conflict — and not just from Trump. When missiles were fired at the UK’s military base on Diego Garcia ten days ago, the UK press were quick to amplify Israel’s breathless warnings that Iran has the firepower to strike London, in eerie echoes of The Sun‘s “45 Minutes from Doom” headline of 2003.
“Crisis of Honesty”
The problem for UK citizens is that any pledge from Starmer’s mouth, even on a matter as serious as this, is virtually worthless. As the veteran journalist Peter Oborne warned in early 2024, just months before Starmer’s election, “there is crisis of honesty” in UK politics, and “you would be very unwise to believe a word Starmer ever says — he has a long record of making promises which he then goes on to break.”:
Since the US and Israel began their illegal war on Iran on February 28, the UK has already pivoted from an initial refusal of base access to a state of deep involvement in the conflict while insisting it is not really involved. Not only are British bases hosting US bombers but RAF fighters are also intercepting Iranian drones that are targeting UK allies in the West Asia region.
As the Guardian reported a couple of days ago, the UK is sending more military support to the Gulf, taking the total deployment to 1,000 troops, even as Donald Trump mocks Britain for not getting more involved:
Speaking from Qatar where he met UK troops, the defence secretary, John Healey, said the extra deployment was in response to an “expanding threat” from Iran.
He confirmed that the UK would send more Typhoon jets to Qatar, as well as the Sky Sabre anti-drone and missile system to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Healey said: “What’s struck me being here over the last couple of days is how clear it is in the Middle East that Iran is expanding its attacks, which I totally condemn as it’s continuing to menace the region.”
In his speech on Wednesday, just seconds after denying any possibility of the UK entering the war, Starmer spoke of his government’s plans to host “a meeting of 35 nations around our statement of intent to push as one for maritime security around the Gulf.” He offered no details of how that would be achieved without the UK getting involved in the war.
The goal, Starmer said, is to make the Strait of Hormuz, which is under the de facto control of Iran, “accessible and safe”. He then added the caveat: “This will not be easy”.
At said meeting, held on Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper did what most senior European politicians appear to be doing these days: she pinned all the blame for what is happening in the Middle East, and all the resulting global economic carnage, on Iran, accusing Tehran of “holding the global economy hostage”.
At no point did Copper even acknowledge that the war was set in motion by the US and Israel. Which puts her in fine company…
Coincidentally (or not), Cooper is one of 13 (out of 25!) Labour cabinet members to have received funding from pro-Israel lobby groups. In her former role as home secretary, it was she who proscribed the campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation — a move that was later ruled unlawful by London’s High Court. Pro-Palestine protesters continue to get arrested though.
The hypocrisy and double standards are off the charts…
The international effort has drawn comparisons with the international “coalition of the willing” that has been assembled, led by the UK and France, to underpin Ukraine’s security after a future ceasefire in that conflict, and will probably have similar levels of success. A list of the countries that participated in the meeting:
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Denmark, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Romania, Bahrain, Lithuania, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Trinidad & Tobago, Croatia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Panama, North Macedonia, Nigeria, Montenegro, Albania, Marshall Islands, Chile, Moldova, Greece, Somalia.
Unsurprisingly, all of the participants are US vassal states with strong ties to Tel Aviv. None, to my knowledge, have done anything to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trump’s illegal energy blockade of Cuba or other related war crimes.
Enabling War
In another meeting this week, this time with UK business leaders, Starmer was slightly more forthcoming about the UK’s real involvement in the US-Israeli war on Iran (emphasis my own).
“The political position we’ve taken, I think, is straightforward which is we’re not going to get drawn into the conflict proper. We will defend British lives in the region, particularly in the Gulf allied states and (indecipherable)… allies there”.
That word, “proper”, is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. After all, there is a marked difference between not being in a conflict, full stop, and not being in a conflict “proper”. The UK may not be “in” this war — as in sending its own troops, vessels and fighters into battle — but it is most certainly enabling it, arguably more so than any other European country.
Since the very beginning of this war, US bombers have been taking off daily from UK bases to conduct sorties against Iranian targets. And their number is apparently growing.
The Starmer government still maintains, apparently with a straight face, that the bombers are being used for exclusively “defensive” purposes. As Declassified UK’s Matt Kennard notes, “any journalist writing “defensive strikes” without quote marks when describing US bombs dropped on Iran from UK bases…is not a journalist, but a propagandist for war and terrorism.”
This is even truer today, after both Trump and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have spoken openly of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age.
Media Complicity
Generally speaking, the British press seems content to parrot Starmer’s claims of the UK’s non-involvement in the war while ignoring or downplaying the increasing role played by British air bases in facilitating US air attacks on Iran. It is reminiscent of the media’s wall of silence on the UK’s well documented complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
As Oborne notes in the video above, political lying on this scale depends on media complicity. The bigger the lie, the greater the complicity. A case in point:
One rare exception in all of this is Scotland’s The National, which on Wednesday ran with the headline, “US Bombers Increase at UK Base ‘Exposes Keir Starmer Iran War Lie‘:
On Monday, UK Defence Journal reported that the US has deployed two additional B-52H Stratofortress bomber planes to RAF Fairford as part of Operation Epic Fury.
The increase takes the total number of long-range jets – which are capable of firing nuclear cruise missiles or nuclear gravity bombs – at the base to eight.
UK Defence Journal also reports that there is a larger contingent of B-1B Lancers operating from the Gloucestershire base.
The B-52 jets can carry up to around 70,000 pounds of weapons, and can operate over 8800 miles before needing to refuel.
It comes as Prestwick Airport has come under increased scrutiny in recent months, due to the US Air Force’s use of the publicly-owned airport amid the conflict in the Middle East.
In response to the increase in US aircraft, Stop the War national convenor Lindsey German said:
“RAF Fairford is being used to illegally attack Iran and Keir Starmer is lying to the British public when he claims it’s just ‘defensive’ action against missile sites targeting British interests. He should not allow the US to use British bases, he must stop collaborating with Donald Trump in his illegal wars and he should break with the US entirely over foreign policy.”
Keir Starmer’s complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war started way back in January when British and American assets started moving to the Middle East, documents Declassified UK :
American planes have been transiting through British military bases on their way to the Middle East since early January after Trump said the US was “locked and loaded” and ready to help Iranian protesters.
Planes have been tracked passing through RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, both in Suffolk, and have also moved through Prestwick Airport, a civilian airport in Scotland.
Over 100 fighter jets have left RAF Lakenheath for the region since January, according to the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace, an activist group focused on US activity at the base.
Additionally, the group says more than 25 C-17 transport planes, which can carry troops and cargo and are typically deployed before an operation, have transited through during that period.
Activists tracking the activity argue that the quantity of American planes passing through British military bases show how important they have been for the US strategically.
At least one of the jets from Lakenheath, an F-15, was reportedly among those which crashed in Kuwait during the war, confirming their involvement in the conflict.
Yet the government continues to insist that such actions fall short of direct participation in the war. Others are not so sure…
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Nick Corbishley 