Sir Keir Starmer draws a narrow legal distinction. But if British bases enable a wider US-Israeli campaign, the UK risks sliding into an unlawful conflict<\/p>\n
In the Commons on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer was clear that Britain will not join offensive action against Tehran. It is wise not to join an illegal attempt at \u201cregime change from the skies<\/a>\u201d. Sir Keir will, however,\u00a0permit US use of British bases for limited defensive strikes aimed at stopping Iranian missile attacks. That is a legally clear line, but it may be politically and militarily tricky to stick to.<\/p>\n Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s actions are reckless and unlawful. But so are Iran\u2019s strikes \u2013 hitting hotels, airports and energy infrastructure<\/a> \u2013 across the Gulf. Where Britain\u2019s allies have asked for support, or where UK nationals are at risk, the UK is legally entitled to act in collective self-defence. But this holds only as long as the action is restricted to halt\u00a0Tehran\u2019s barrage.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sir Keir Starmer draws a narrow legal distinction. But if British bases enable a wider US-Israeli campaign, the UK risks sliding into an unlawful conflict In the Commons on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer was clear that Britain will not join offensive action against Tehran. It is wise not to join an illegal attempt at \u201cregime … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}