In taking so long to respond to what is now a full-on war between Israel and Iran, Donald Trump has done the UK’s prime minister a big favour.
A US decision on the side of direct military intervention would present Keir Starmer with the greatest quandary yet of his year in No 10 – whether to offer UK support, and if so, how much, in what form, and for how long.
The prime minister has already warned against any action that would “ramp up the situation”, that “cooling tensions” and “de-escalation is the priority” – and that, despite “grave concerns” about the threat of Iran’s nuclear programme, the British government is “urging all parties to show restraint and return to diplomacy”.
While Trump ponders whether to join Israeli strikes on Iran, there is, in the words of the prime minister’s official spokesperson, a “real risk of escalation”.
And yet the longer the US president takes to make up his mind, the longer Starmer has to weigh up the pros and cons of the UK following its closest ally into a war that could engulf the whole of the Middle East. And the only really good option from London’s perspective would be if Trump decided to keep the US, officially at least, on the sidelines. Any direct military intervention, and the UK, one way or another, has to choose.
In essence, this is the dilemma that has long lurked somewhere in the nexus between the UK’s departure from the European Union and the election of Donald Trump to a second term. These two developments left the UK straddled awkwardly mid-Atlantic, between an EU it no longer belongs to and a US out of sympathy with Europe on practically everything, from tariffs to collective security. Now may be the moment of truth.
Were the US to decide to intervene, the UK could just about persist in its current holding pattern and do no more. That would mean repeated (vain) calls for de-escalation; new warnings to hard-pressed consumers about higher energy prices (with the blame now pinned on Iran, rather than Russia), more travel bans and terrorist alerts. The UK might also provide a much-needed channel to Tehran, given that David Lammy has, so far, kept up communications with his Iranian counterpart.
Going some way, but not the whole way, to support the US – by offering facilities at UK bases in, say, Cyprus, could, however, present risks, including the risk of reprisals from Iran.
The danger may be less now, given what appears to be Iran’s debilitated state from Israeli airstrikes. But the UK’s early and categorical denial that the US had used Cyprus as a transit point for the extra air power it sent to the region showed that London clearly understood the potential risk.
Not offering the US direct, or even partial, military support, however, could have costs of its own. Trump is regarded as prizing loyalty above almost anything else. Where would a passive UK stance leave the “special relationship”? Might Trump reconsider the tariff concessions he has agreed for the UK? Might the US scale back intelligence cooperation (as it threatened over the UK’s telecoms ties to China)?
Might the UK lose what it sees as its privileged position in Washington to, say, Germany, whose new chancellor Friedrich Merz seemed to be auditioning for the leader of Europe during his recent visit to the White House and has been more forthright in support of Israel’s action than Starmer?
On the other hand, the balance between aiding and not aiding the United States in a new war may be finer than it may look from this single, close vantage point. How special is that special relationship?
Harold Wilson managed to keep Britain out of Vietnam without undue, long-term damage. Contrast this with Tony Blair’s near-unconditional support for the US in Iraq. This bought exactly how much political capital for him or his government in Washington over the longer term? As for the damage to the domestic reputation of the UK intelligence services and the influence of the UK in the Middle East, that has been huge and lasting.
At the time, however, Blair’s argument was not just about security – destroying the supposed threat from Iraq’s (as it turned out, non-existent) chemical weapons – but also about principle. He, like George W Bush, was seduced by the promise of the “freedom” and “democracy” that were forecast to follow “regime change”, which may also be an objective of Israel’s war on Iran.
It is hard to believe that Starmer and Labour’s leading lights today could be similarly seduced, given the experience not only of Iraq, but of Libya and Afghanistan, and of David Cameron’s narrowly lost vote in parliament over intervention in Syria. But might the current parliament vote to support a UK military intervention on other grounds, such as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran or the view that Israel’s very existence is threatened?
That cannot be excluded. But the gulf that would then be exposed between MPs voting to put the UK in harm’s way for the sake of Israel, and the weight of public opinion that condemns Israel because of Gaza, could present Starmer with big political difficulties, despite Labour’s majority.
A parliamentary debate could also open up the bigger picture. One of the arguments that raged during my childhood was whether the UK should keep a military presence “east of Suez”. The upshot was that it sort of did, and it sort of didn’t, but the UK’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq had the effect of deciding the issue to this day.
As it happens, the Israel-Iran war has erupted barely two weeks after the government published its Strategic Defence Review, which identified Russia as the biggest threat facing the country, recommending a “Nato-first” policy and higher defence spending to address this threat. There was no mention of the UK becoming embroiled in a new and potentially open-ended war in the Middle East.
With its self-accepted status as a medium-sized power, a pared-back military, and capabilities increasingly focused on Russia, the UK is likely to find its resources severely stretched in the event that Starmer decides in favour of actively helping the US in the Middle East. However the Israel-Iran war ends, the “east of Suez” discussion needs to be reopened, with the UK’s present capacity and priorities in mind.
In the meantime, the difficulty for Trump should not be minimised. He campaigned on a pledge to keep the US out of far-away, forever wars, and prides himself on the – correct – fact that the US avoided any new wars in his first term. He is clearly in two minds about Israel and Iran. Long, Starmer and his government must hope, may his indecision continue.
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