World leaders gather to discuss defence amid Israel-Iran tensions
Tensions between Israel and Iran could dominate discussions among world leaders at the Nato summit amid a fragile ceasefire.
Sir Keir Starmer is among those in The Hague for a gathering of the alliance, having called on the Middle Eastern nations to maintain the pause in hostilities.
In a conversation with the French and German leaders at the summit on Tuesday, Sir Keir 'reflected on the volatile situation in the Middle East,' according to a Downing Street spokeswoman.
The leaders agreed that 'now was the time for diplomacy and for Iran to come to the negotiating table', the spokeswoman added.
It comes as intelligence reports in the US suggested that the American attack on Iran's nuclear programme over the weekend have only set it back by a few months, rather than destroyed it as Donald Trump previously suggested.
The White House pushed back on the reports on Tuesday evening, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying it was 'flat out wrong'.
'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear programme,' she said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday Sir Keir had said that the US had helped in 'alleviating' the threat of nuclear capability for Iran with their strikes on Saturday.
Asked on his visit to The Hague whether he personally felt safe with Mr Trump in the White House and why others should, the Prime Minister told Channel 5 News: 'Look, I think what we've seen over the last few days is the Americans alleviating a threat to nuclear weaponry by the Iranians and bringing about a ceasefire in the early hours of today.
'I think now what needs to happen is that ceasefire needs to be maintained, and that will be the focus of our attention, our engagement, our discussions, because that ceasefire provides the space for the negotiations that need to take place.'
After the ceasefire was initially struck early on Tuesday, Israel claimed Iran had violated the deal by carrying out strikes after it came into force.
Mr Trump called for Israel to withdraw its warplanes, and claimed both it and Iran 'don't know what the f*** they're doing' as he departed for the summit in the Netherlands.
The UK has continued to evacuate Britons out of Israel, and a second flight left Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
The Foreign Office confirmed the plane had left Israel and said further flights would be considered depending on demand.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have said that MPs should be given a vote in the event of any future deployment of troops.
The party's foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller said: 'With the Middle East in the throes of an all-out regional war, we are reckoning once again with the prospect of the UK becoming embroiled in foreign conflict.
'No one knows the fragility of peace in that region, or the price paid for our safety, better than our British troops. It's critical that, if they are asked to put their lives on the line for the UK in active conflict zones, this decision is subject to the strongest democratic scrutiny our country can offer.'
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28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
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Spectator
43 minutes ago
- Spectator
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Starmer's national security strategy has done almost the opposite (though that ascribes to it too much coherence). We have seen the Strategic Defence Review setting out the future shape and tasks of the armed forces, three internal FCDO reviews have reported to the Foreign Secretary (but not released) and as much of the China audit as we will see is in the National Security Strategy. Meanwhile the Defence Industrial Strategy is a work in progress, and the AUKUS review risks being made irrelevant by the Trump administration's own re-examination. So it is neither top-down, nor bottom-up, but rather lacking any direction at all. I wouldn't have started from here. One important element of the NSS is an announcement on expenditure. The Nato summit is expected to agree a spending target of 5 per cent of GDP, made up of 3.5 per cent on core defence capabilities and 1.5 per cent on 'resilience and security'. 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This matters because if the government simply moves spending from one column on its mother of all spreadsheets to another, it does not acquire a new capability. Equally, there is no deterrent effect on Russia or China, or 'Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm' – as Elizabeth I once so neatly put it. If the Prime Minister designates Border Security Command as a 'national security' asset, that is £150 million he had already earmarked, not new investment. The 2008 national security strategy was a serious and systematic attempt, supervised and delivered by Robert Hannigan and Patrick Turner, to design an overarching framework for the defence of the UK and its interests, then develop policies to support that framework. Its 2025 successor does not –by its nature and timing cannot – achieve that same goal. The national security strategy is not all bad; it comes in large part from the pen of the formidable Professor John Bew, who spent five years in Downing Street as foreign policy adviser to four successive prime ministers. But he has been asked to change the tyres on a moving car, creating a strategy around half a dozen other reviews in various stages of progress. There must be very serious concerns now that it is little more than a centripetal instrument for pulling in enough government expenditure nominally to meet our Nato obligations. Our allies are unlikely to be fooled, and our enemies will certainly not be.
