Keir Starmer joins Europe in split with US over Iran airstrikes

As airstrikes hit targets across Iran yesterday, US president Donald Trump gave a televised message to Iranian civilians. “Bombs will fall everywhere,” he said. “When we finish our work, take control of your government.” It was immediately clear, however, that Britain and other European allies would not support the effort to bring about regime change in Tehran.

Peter Ricketts, former head of the Foreign Office and national security adviser, believes the divergence over Iran is “another example” of increasingly incompatible values on either side of the Atlantic. “The Americans have effectively given up on any effort to be consistent with international law , whereas Britain and all the other Europeans still believe that that way lies a world where ‘might is right’,” he said. “But regime change can’t be achieved from airstrikes.”

Keir Starmer was clear that the UK “played no role” in the US and Israeli military action against Iran. Although British forces were active and planes took to the skies, they were involved only in coordinated defensive operations “to protect our people, our interests and our allies”.

The prime minister had given Trump plenty of warning that the US would not be able to use RAF bases in Diego Garcia and Fairford to launch a military attack, which the attorney general, Richard Hermer, is believed to have advised would be in breach of international law.

There will be no standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the Americans over this campaign. Starmer stressed that the Iranian regime is “utterly abhorrent” but his objective was much more limited: “They must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.”

The prime minister urged the Iranians to halt the retaliatory strikes, insisting it was vital to “prevent further escalation and return to a diplomatic process”. But that process had been derailed by Israel and the US launching airstrikes at the very moment when nuclear negotiations appeared to be having some success.

On Friday, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, the main mediator in the discussions, had taken the unusual step of going to Washington with a message that “significant progress” was being made, but they needed “a bit more time”. Just like last June, when Israel launched an attack on Iran three days before Iran and the US were due to meet, the prospect of a deal was obliterated by military action.

The Iranian crisis has provoked the latest wobble in the increasingly fragile “special relationship” between the UK and the US as the old rules-based order collapses under the weight of an unpredictable and capricious president. There is a rift growing between Europe and the US too.

French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, joined Starmer in distancing themselves from the airstrikes. They called for “a resumption of negotiations”, adding: “Ultimately, the Iranian people must be allowed to determine their future.”

Yet Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said his country “supports the US acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security”.

The tension between Europe and the US is not at the level of the Greenland confrontation, when Trump threatened to seize territory from a Nato ally, before backing down. But Ricketts thinks the momentum of the armada sent to Iran may have carried the president into war with no “achievable” political objective. “I think the massive military build-up basically boxed Trump in, so that either he had to have a huge concession from the Iranians, or, almost inevitably, he was going to have to use that military power or look like he chickened out,” he said. “It’s very striking that the more Trump has turned to military force, the more he seems to be attracted to it. He thinks that so far it’s been cost-free. That’s a risk, because this time Iran is more serious about striking back.”

Photograph by Jonathan Brady/PA