Luck is an underrated commodity in politics and conflicts. When it comes to avoiding strikes by an enemy’s long-range ballistic missiles, luck is the difference between a narrow miss and catastrophe.
The Iranian show of force in firing two of these at the Chagos archipelago base in the Indian Ocean, jointly operated by the US and UK, was a miss – one shot down, one failed in flight. Yet, it reminds us that the stakes in the Iran war are rising.
That has prompted Israel to claim that Iran’s military programme is developing lethal weaponry able to reach London, Paris or Berlin – in essence a “told you so” message to sleepy Western leaders that one way or the other, this conflict is their business too. Back home, in the odd way of Sunday broadcast rounds, Steve Reed, an affable Housing Secretary with no first-hand knowledge of threat assessment, trundled forth to claim there was “no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or even could, if they wanted to”.
But all weapons deployments, even the ones which fail, are exercises in future power and test potential. It would therefore be short-sighted not to see in this move to draw Chagos into the threat window as a signal that a wounded, but well-armed, regime in Tehran sees itself at war with any country which comes to the aid of the US.
War is always a kinetic business. Over three short weeks of hurly-burly in the Gulf, our own Government has already had several contradictory phases of response and omission. The first, since Christmas, was what one military source characterises as a “strong lean-back position” from the UK and a desire in No 10 to stay as far away from the build-up in the Gulf as possible.
But, Britain was well-sighted in military intelligence in the region – the fruits of having deep defence in Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait and a strong defence industry. We also have more operational contact with the US at senior level than many other Western countries.
So, the idea that the decision to attack Iran at scale was a surprise which we are scrambling to respond to should produce an Angela Merkel eye-roll. No: the real problem was that Keir Starmer himself was less than clear on what he wanted, other than to avoid the charge of an “illegal” war – with the echoes of the Iraq war as his framing. This too is a flawed tool of analysis.
While there are similarities and warnings from that conflict, Iran is not Iraq, 2025 is not 2003 and Donald Trump is not George W Bush. Crucially, the threat level internationally is much higher than it was, as Russia fights a proxy war with Nato in Ukraine, backed by China. The stakes were high then – much higher and more expansively so now.
And events also move faster. If Starmer is going to argue one minute that he urgently needs a lease deal on the Chagos Islands with Mauritius because it is such an important military and intelligence asset, then he needs to be prepared to be proactive in defending it.
This is where a wavering policy has landed: he is now allowing the US to use UK bases in ways he cannot control (essentially for bombing raids). The technical reason for the switcheroo from the initial refusal to do so, is that it is, to quote the Foreign Office, “a response to the Iranian aggression against Gulf partners countries who had not attacked Iran”.
But this was foreseeable, which is why it all sounds so muddled. UK military and other intelligence in the region have provided numerous scenarios over the past couple of years about a potential blockage of the Straits of Hormuz and the risk this would pose of an oil price shock. If anyone in Government is surprised, it suggests they were not listening – or simply hoped this would not become the major flashpoint. Foresight has not been a British A-game in this regard.
In an interview at the end of last week, the veteran UN secretary general António Guterres, a man at the sharp end of Donald Trump’s broadsides, told me that he nonetheless understood the need for Washington to declare a “win” in its (changeable) list of objectives if it is to prevail on Israel to declare a military victory and forge an uneasy peace. Given his dislike of Trump’s “right is might” doctrine, it must have tested him to say so.
What is less clear is what our own Government wants to happen. It is not enough at this point to say you wish it had not started or stick to the old Foreign Office plain chant about the benefits of Iran’s nuclear capacity; when Tehran is throwing long-range missiles around, far beyond the Gulf, it’s best to assume talking is off the table for the foreseeable future. And the Iraq crisis has some memories which should count here. The UK can certainly be judicious about which parts of this conflict it joins and in which constellations with Gulf and European allies.
But the ratchet of oil prices is about to throw already shaky growth prospects in Britain off course and force a rethink of Labour’s totemic energy policies. The loosening of sanctions by the US will feed a mighty and aggressive Russian war machine – which treats the UK as one of its enemies too.
The “lean back” period of hoping trouble would pass us by is over. It was always a delaying tactic, not a strategy. That is what Starmerism lacks as the conflict looms larger, far beyond Hormuz.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO and host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
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