In March 2003, a million people filled the streets of London with one message — do not do this. They saw through the weapons of mass destruction lie before the bombs even fell. They warned, plainly, that what was about to happen would unleash decades of misery. They were right. More than a million Iraqi lives later, most people now accept the Iraq war for what it was, a catastrophic, illegal blunder that Britain should never have been part of.
One would think the lesson had been learned. It has not.
It has been nearly a month since the United States and Israel launched their assault on Iran. More than 1,400 Iranians and over 1,000 Lebanese civilians are dead. And Britain, once again, is quietly involved, while its prime minister insists, with a straight face, that it is not.
The familiar lie
To justify the bombing, Donald Trump invoked the spectre of Iranian nuclear ambitions, spoke of eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime and warned that its activities endangered American troops, bases and allies across the world. The language will feel familiar to anyone who lived through 2003.
But as Joe Kent, the recently resigned Director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, stated plainly in his resignation letter, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and it was clear the war began due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
The facts are straightforward. There is precisely one nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, and it is Israel. A diplomatic path existed. Next month’s UN Conference of the Parties to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty offered a legitimate forum to address concerns. The US and Israel chose bombs over dialogue, and in doing so, placed the safety of the entire world at risk.
Starmer’s fiction
Shortly after the strikes began, Keir Starmer gave Washington permission to use British military bases to hit Iranian missile sites. Last week, his government extended that permission to cover strikes targeting the Strait of Hormuz.
The prime minister’s position, repeated faithfully by much of the British media, is that the UK is not involved. He insists the bases are being used only for defensive purposes.
This is nonsense.
When a bomber lifts off from RAF Fairford and drops ordnance on Iranian soil, Britain is involved in that act of aggression. When civilians are killed in those strikes, their families will not be consoled by being told the bombs were defensive. No amount of careful wording changes the underlying reality— the United Kingdom is a direct participant in this war.
Spain looked at the same situation and said, without hesitation, that it would have no part in an illegal conflict. Britain chose the opposite path, and it did so without a single vote in Parliament, without debate, without scrutiny.
A bill ignored
Earlier this month, a bill was tabled in the House of Commons that would require parliamentary approval before Britain could be drawn into any military action, including the use of its bases by foreign powers. The prime minister has refused to back it.
The parallel with Iraq is not merely rhetorical. In 2003, those who opposed that war were accused of giving comfort to Saddam Hussein. Today, opponents of the Iran war face the same charge. It was a dishonest argument then, and it remains one now.
Whatever one thinks of the Iranian government, there is no legal basis for a war aimed at regime change. History offers not a single credible example of aerial bombardment delivering human rights to a population. Trump’s interest in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba or anywhere else has nothing to do with human rights. It is about resources and control — and Britain is providing the launchpad.
The bigger question
The record of American-led foreign interventions is a consistent one — chaos, instability and grief, followed by decades of consequences that ordinary people bear long after the politicians have moved on.
Britain has a choice. It can stand for international law, sovereignty and the kind of consistent, principled foreign policy that commands respect. Or it can keep bending to Washington, as it did in 2003, as it is doing now, and wait for history to deliver its verdict again.
History, on this subject, has never been kind.
