Interesting timeline of events from Declassified UK
What is Britain doing in Iran?
On Saturday morning, the US and Israel launched an illegal war of aggression against Iran.
While that is not how the events of recent days have been reported across the media, there is simply no other way to describe what has happened.
The Iranian government was in the process of negotiating with the US on its nuclear programme and, according to the Omani mediators, progress was being made.
Normalisation between Washington and Tehran is precisely what keeps Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu up at night.
For over three decades, he has been claiming that Iran was on the cusp of attaining a nuclear weapon, even as Israel remains the only power in the region to actually possess them.
In 1992, Netanyahu declared Iran would “become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb”. In 2015, during the development of the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu told the US Congress that negotiations would “not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons”.
That deal went ahead nonetheless, and Iran was complying with its obligations to limit activities which could lead to the production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
But in 2018, just one week after Netanyahu delivered a presentation claiming “Iran lied, big time” about its nuclear activities, US president Donald Trump pulled out of the deal.
The US and Israel went on to bomb Iran in June 2025, with Trump claiming the strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
Despite this, Trump has tried to resurrect the nuclear angle once again in his attempt to justify the current war on Tehran. “An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American,” he said this week.
The problem for Trump and Netanyahu, insofar as international law is concerned, is that a foreign state does not pose an “imminent threat” just because they say it does.
Which brings us to the legality of Britain’s ever-growing involvement in the war.
The UK government allowed US forces to transit through Royal Air Force bases during the build-up to the operation but did not allow British bases to be used in the initial attack.
Starmer then announced on Sunday that the US could use RAF bases – particularly Diego Garcia and Fairford, which are the most operationally useful to the US – to launch what he said were “defensive” operations against Iranian missile launchers and depots.
Downing Street said on the record that the decision to take “limited defensive action” had been made in response to a “request” from the US.
According to law professor Adil Haque: “Since the US may not use force against Iran in collective self-defense of the Gulf States, the UK may not assist the US in using force against Iran under any circumstances”.
In other words, Britain’s decision to provide “defensive” support to the aggressor would appear to make it complicit in the crime of aggression.
“It is not possible for the UK to facilitate US strikes that are aimed at defending the Gulf states without also facilitating US strikes that are part of its unlawful campaign”, Haque added.
In any case, it remains unclear how the UK government can ensure US strikes launched from RAF bases are meeting its definition of “defensive”, particularly in light of the reported lack of intelligence sharing between London and Washington.
In the days since Starmer committed British bases to these “defensive” operations, the US has continued to telegraph its war crimes to the world.
US war secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US and Israel were aiming for “uncontested airspace” over Iran “in under a week” to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long”. This comes amid the carpet bombing of Tehran, a city of around 10 million people.
A US submarine also struck an Iranian naval vessel in international waters, thousands of miles from Iran, and fled the scene without making any attempt to pick up survivors.
Starmer said on Monday he had learnt from the “mistakes of Iraq”. Providing material support to the US as it conducts an illegal war in the Middle East would indicate he hasn’t.