British Defence Secretary John Healey refused on Sunday to say whether the UK government agreed with the U.S.-Israeli strikes on the Islamist Iranian regime, prompting pushback from opposition parties.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday morning, Defence Secretary Healey stressed that Britain “played no part” in the American-led strikes on Iran on Saturday, while repeatedly refusing to say whether Downing Street supported the strikes in principle.
While Healey said that the UK shares the “primary aim” of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, on whether Washington was justified in attacking the regime, he merely said: “It is for the US to set out the legal basis of the action that it took.”
The prevarications from the Labour politician sparked a wave of criticism, including from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who said: “Britain’s Defence Secretary can’t tell us if our government supports the strikes on Iran.
“The Labour government has already lost all support and all credibility. It now can’t answer simple questions. We are not being governed.”
Iraqi-born former Chancellor Nadhim Zawahi, who recently defected from the Conservatives to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, added that the Defence Secretary’s performance was “sad”.
“John is a good man, I have known him for 16 years, we both did the USA/UK political exchange programme together as young MPs. He is sound on this stuff, I suspect he is being constrained by a timid, weak PM that has an Islamists left flank that he fears/trying to please,” Zawahi wrote.
The former government minister added that the stance makes the UK “an irrelevance on the world stage, when we should be standing with the Iranian people at their moment of need,” calling the government on “on the wrong side of history.”
Appearing before an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz said that strikes were “lawful actions” taken to mitigate the threat posed by the Iranian regime and that Washington had “made every effort to negotiate a peaceful resolution” prior to the conflict.
It comes amid an ongoing spat between Britain and America over the Chagos Islands, which host a joint UK-U.S. military base on Diego Garcia. London, which has agreed to hand over the territory to the China-aligned Mauritius, has reportedly barred the United States from using the military base to launch attacks against Iran.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said on Saturday: “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!”
In contrast to the United Kingdom, the fellow Anglosphere countries of Australia and Canada were among the first from the international community on Saturday to back the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on Sunday morning that the death of Khamenei represents a “defining moment in Iran’s history” and that there is now an “open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape.”
“I’m in contact with partners, including those in the region that bear the brunt of Iran’s military actions, to find practical steps for de-escalation,” she said.