Britain knew that the US was considering attacking Iran from the moment Donald Trump told protesters that “help is coming” in the middle of January. It was obvious to the world that the White House was serious when the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was sent to the Arabian Sea in late January.
But as Trump gradually built up his “massive armada”, reinforcing it with a second carrier strike group in mid-February, UK deployments were constrained and limited even though there was a recognition that it was likely allies and bases with British soldiers would be attacked in an Iranian retaliation.
In January, Ministry of Defence insiders said they understood that Trump was “giving himself options” – so he could attack Iran if nuclear negotiations were deemed to be failing. Qatar asked the UK to redeploy a joint RAF squadron from Coningsby, Lincolnshire to the country that month, reassurance if an attack on Iran escalated.
Six F-35B jets flew to Akrotiri in Cyprus in February, but at that point the UK wanted to keep its military positioning low key. It was clear for weeks that the UK did not want to become part of any initial attack by the US and Israel on Iran, judging it to be illegal under international law, because Tehran posed no imminent threat to the UK.
Keir Starmer discussed Iran with Donald Trump in the evening of 17 February. At one point Trump asked if the US could use British airbases to launch bombing missions in Iran, raising the question of what else the US president shared of his military intentions with the prime minister.
Starmer refused, prompting an angry post from the US president the following day, complaining that the UK had made “a big mistake” in handing over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, home to the Diego Garcia airbase. “It may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia”, to attack Iran, Trump said.
The start of the US-Israeli attack was dictated by the realisation that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was meeting senior security officials in his compound on Saturday morning. But the realisation that something could be close had prompted the UK to withdraw its embassy staff by Friday.
Yet when hostilities broke out, the UK did not seem appropriately equipped. By good fortune, a missile and drone attack on a US naval base in Bahrain narrowly missed where about 300 British personnel were based. A reported three Shahed-type drones were fired at the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus, one striking a runway.
The Akrotiri strike was not serious, but it was embarrassing, prompting the evacuation of nearby villages, families from the base and unsettling the Cypriots. The country’s president asked for naval support from France and Germany as the UK considered its options – before choosing to sending a destroyer on Tuesday.
However, the Royal Navy has no warships, apart from a single mine hunter, in the Middle East for the first time since 2019. The last permanently deployed frigate, HMS Lancaster, was retired in December, and the only options were three destroyers out of a total of six capable of tracking and destroying drones.
Last month V Adm Steve Moorhouse, fleet commander of the Royal Navy, argued that a reduced British presence in the Middle East was a virtue. Allies in the region wanted “a more modern offer”, which said was “boarding teams to help them to build up their own capabilities”.
Now there are worries that Iran’s retaliation against Gulf states could exhaust Patriot and Thaad air defence systems used by countries in the region. Starmer agreed to allow the US to use British bases after all to target Iranian missile silos on Sunday – but by Wednesday officials were briefing the UK might have to go further, and participate more actively in striking targets itself.
Meanwhile, HMS Dragon, will take several days to be hauled out of dry dock and be made ready. It will then take the best part of a week to arrive at Cyprus. This may not matter if the drone attacks have stopped, but when it comes to reassuring allies – or the 300,000 Britons living in the Gulf – the UK appears to have struggled to keep up.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
