While you were sleeping, more civilian locations in the Iranian capital of Tehran were hit with massive explosions, while Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes on towns in southern and eastern Lebanon.
It really is anything to distract from the Epstein Files for US “president of peace”Donald Trump – and, of course, the fulfilment of a long-held ambition for Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since the US and Israel launched their war of aggression last weekend, more than 1,300 peoplehave been killed in Iran. This includes at least 180 children, the majority massacred in an airstrike on a girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, on Saturday. US military investigators now believe their own country was responsible.
This is the illegal war that prime minister Keir Starmer seems determined to draw Britain into, despite claiming that he has “learnt from the mistakes of Iraq”.
Starmer caved to pressure earlier this week, allowing the US to use RAF bases for operations against Iran after initially refusing. The US and Israel started bombing Tehran on Saturday – a day later, the PM made his signature move (the U-turn) and acquiesced to the US’s request.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said last night that strikes on Iran were about to “surge dramatically”thanks to Starmer’s decision to let the US use the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Islands. Good to know that the US can target more kids’ schools now.
Labour governments in my lifetime have a decidedly poor record when it comes to following the US into wars in the Middle East. But spare a thought for Starmer, who really has been under fire from all directions.
In fact, the PM has failed to please anyone with his decisions. Trump called Starmer a “loser” and compared him unfavourably to Winston Churchill. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused him of “catching arrows rather than stopping the archer”. And Reform’s Nigel Farage branded him a “coward”.
Funnily enough, anti-immigration parties are cheering loudest for our involvement in the war. As my colleague Aaron Bastani has pointed out, for political outfits that despise refugees, they sure seem committed to making more of them.
The distinction between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ actions is also doing some heavy-lifting this week. According to Downing Street, we’re only letting the US launch “specific and limited defensive actions” from our bases. We won’t “join offensive action”, apparently, but will only act in the “collective self-defence of regional allies who have requested support”. If only our government had the spine of Spain’s.
While the attacks on Iran are widely viewed as illegal under international law, experts are divided on whether Iran is justified in its strikes on Gulf territories in response, and whether the UK can facilitate US strikes aimed at defending Gulf states without being complicit in those US attacks which are almost definitely illegal.
Most of Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile strikes seem to have been intercepted, but some have hit military assets and civilian infrastructure. A drone strike on the UK’s now-infamous Cyprus base RAF Akrotiri, used for Gaza spy flights during Israel’s genocide, was found not to have been launched by Iran.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has tabled a bill that would mean Starmer couldn’t just give the US (or any foreign power, no matter how ‘special’ the relationship) use of UK bases without parliamentary approval. It could also allow permission for the US using UK bases to be withdrawn.
Predictably, the UK media has been cranking up the consent-manufacturing machinery, and our further involvement in a war in the Middle East feels increasingly likely. Déjà vu, anyone?
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.