The UK government has continued to tread a delicate diplomatic line by avoiding explicit support for the US and Israeli strikes on Iran while condemning Iran’s “indiscriminate” attacks on other countries.
Defence Secretary John Healey, appearing on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday morning, described the Iranian regime as a “source of evil” amid emerging differences in political reaction at home.
The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have both denounced the military action taken by the US and Iran as illegal.
But Reform has called for greater UK support for the Americans and the Conservatives said the government should have been more “proactive”.
As strikes on Tehran continued, the Sunday Times reported that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had blocked the USA from using British air bases to launch attacks on legal grounds.
Healey repeatedly batted back questions this morning on whether he believed the strikes were legal, saying that “we didn’t participate”.
It was, he said “for the US to set out the legal basis for the action it took”.
With the government having confirmed that British jets were in the air in the region last night, Healey said on the programme: “All our action is defensive, it is within international law.”
Britain shared “the primary aim of all allies in the region and the US that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon,” he insisted.
“I’m not mourning the end of the Ayatollah,” he added. “Few people do. Many people In Iran are on the streets cheering. The important thing now is that Iran steps back from its increasing uncontrolled, indiscriminate, widespread attacks in the region, gives up its weapons programmes and we are able to return to a diplomatic path that in the long run is the only way to settle these problems.”
But the government’s stance has come under attack from both right and left.
Also appearing on Kuenssberg, Green leader Zac Polanski, fresh from the party’s historic by-election triumph on Thursday, condemned the attack on Iran as “illegal and unprovoked”.
He said it was “outrageous” that while Iran had been at the negotiating table the Prime Minister had put out a statement condemning it for retaliating but not Israel and the US for launching the attacks in the first place.
Though he referred to the end of Iran’s “brutal, murderous dictator”, he went on to declare: “They literally murdered the leader at the same time they were at the negotiation table."
The Green leader also stated: “But the moment Israel allegedly bombs a school that kills 80 schoolchildren we know that international law is not being obeyed.”
However Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel defended the move against the theocracy. It was, she told Kuenssberg, “absolutely astonishing that Keir Starmer did not step up and do much more to be proactive when it came to the strikes that took place”.
She said the Israelis had felt that talks to prevent Iran rebuilding its nuclear programme and reduce its missile threat had not made progress.
“For them to take an action as they have, they must have felt and there must be some basis for them to feel they were under threat, their countries in particular, and therefore they took the action that was required."
Pressed on the legality of the action, she responded: “We don’t know if it was illegal, let’s be clear about that. Any country that has the prospect of an imminent threat from a hostile state has the right to undertake action in the way that America and Israel has done. It is not for them to sit back and wait to be attacked.”
Tory MP and former security minister Tom Tugendhat raised concern over the defence secretary’s stance.
He tweeted: “The problem with John Healey's silence is that he's not refusing to share internal government discussions, he's refusing to say who governs Britain.
“Is it the Prime Minister in the interest of the British people taking actions to keep us safe?
“Or is it a legal code interpreted by an unelected priestly class applied only to the UK and that leaves us exposed and vulnerable?
”Reform leader Nigel Farage posted on X: “The Prime Minister needs to change his mind on the use of our military bases and back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran!”
But his LibDem counterpart Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister should rule out any use of British bases, stating on X: “Donald Trump’s unilateral and illegal military action won’t deliver freedom, peace and security. It will only unleash more bloodshed.”
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