Israel's war on Iran: Why the UK must stay out

Middle East Eye

4 hours ago

For three decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling the world that Iran is on the cusp of joining the nuclear weapons club. He has obsessed about bombing it, engaging in a full-scale war, and bringing about regime change.
In 2002, Netanyahu pressed the US and others to invade Iraq, on the falsehood that it had a nuclear weapons programme. He proclaimed how much safer the region would be in evidence to the US Congress.
'If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,' Netanyahu said. 'And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.'
As ever, it is best to ignore Netanyahu's advice.
The Anglo-US war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation ended Washington's period as the world's sole hyper-power. It paved the way for Iran to dominate not just Iraq, but Syria and Lebanon too.
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It allowed al-Qaeda to prosper and open a new murderous front in Iraq, and it saw the genesis of the Islamic State group, which took over much of Iraq and Syria for a period of time, and mounted deadly attacks across Europe and elsewhere.
Fast forward to 2015, when Netanyahu was in Congress hammering former President Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal, the one mechanism that could limit Iranian nuclear ambitions and put its facilities under detailed and intensive supervision and monitoring.
He then persuaded President Donald Trump to rip up the deal in 2018. Had that deal been adhered to, war with Iran would not be happening today. It was not Iran that pulled out of the agreement, but the US.
War of choice
On Iraq, Netanyahu pressed the US to do the job while Israel watched. This time, he opted to make a pre-emptive strike not on Iran, but on any chance of a viable US-Iranian nuclear deal. By attacking Iran, he is trying to engineer the necessary conditions to suck in the US and its European allies.
Netanyahu promotes the line that Iran is days away from a nuclear bomb, without providing precise evidence for this claim. What we do know is that the latest assessment by the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, this past March found that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003'.
There was time for diplomacy to resolve the issue.
But already, the UK looks to be falling for this. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government wisely started by calling for de-escalation, but this line has faltered. Ministers are talking about backing Israel's right to self-defence, a complete inversion of the objective reality.
Netanyahu has a coterie of useful idiots on both sides of the Atlantic willing to echo and amplify his every warlike utterance
It was Israel that unilaterally launched major strikes on Iran, almost certainly a violation of international law and a crime of aggression. This was a war of choice, and the choice was Netanyahu's. The UK was not even given prior warning.
Israel's attacks might have incapacitated Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programmes for a time, but more likely, this will drive Tehran to pursue both as a priority for its own preservation.
Netanyahu has a coterie of useful idiots on both sides of the Atlantic willing to echo and amplify his every warlike utterance. Very few of them demonstrate any sophisticated understanding of the Middle East, let alone the countries targeted for bombing and invasion.
In the UK, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is goading Starmer with the childish argument that his government is 'so weak they make Neville Chamberlain look positively robust'.
Starmer has dispatched additional British military assets to the region and will not rule out a deployment in defence of Israel. Even by saying this, the UK government has lurched - without proper strategic assessment or parliamentary debate - closer towards a war that it should stay well clear of.
Bulldozing red lines
If British forces are deployed to defend Israel, they would be actively facilitating the attacks on Iran. This is how Tehran and others would see it. Britain would not only be complicit, but it would have zero influence on Israel's aggression against Iran, or whether it was in accordance with international law.
Imagine, as Israel has done repeatedly in Gaza and Lebanon, that Israeli bombs took out civilian infrastructure, including power stations and waterworks. A complaint from Starmer or his foreign secretary, David Lammy, would not stop the next round of Israeli bombing.
UK military assistance might start out with the intent of just knocking out Iranian drones and missiles. But it would not end there. Iran would not hesitate in responding, and it could include British targets as a result.
If Britain dips its toes into the bloody waters, before long, it will be up to its neck. If British targets are hit and personnel killed, then British forces would soon be in active participation against Iranian targets as part of a war that Netanyahu orchestrated.
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Above all, the UK should not be treating Israel in any way, shape or form as an ally. This Israeli government, as it prosecutes a war on Iran, is simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
It has bulldozed through every red line. It has systematically destroyed all of Gaza's healthcare system, forcibly displaced almost the entire population of two million people, and openly used starvation as a weapon of war. Its ministers have routinely and without consequence uttered chilling genocidal comments, calling for the annihilation and destruction of Gaza - a threat that is being played out every single day.
One hopes that this is not a government with whom the UK shares interests or values. Starmer claims to support international law, but allies himself with a state that the International Court of Justice is investigating for genocide. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is, as so many leaders have found out over decades, a brazen liar and deeply untrustworthy.
Staying out of this conflict would not be weakness, but a wise choice to avoid a reckless gamble on a war pursued by a leader desperate to save his own skin and political future.
The UK should take the lead in returning to a rules-based international order where war is the last resort. It is not de-escalation that is required, but credible conflict resolution, secured with iron-clad diplomatic deals to end the Iran-Israel war and the genocide in Gaza.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.