The British government may have been backed into a corner over US demands to launch attack on Iran from UK bases – and it may cause a dramatic split with President Donald Trump, says Mirror Defence and Security Editor Chris Hughes
Britain has apparently flat-out refused permission for the US to launch attacks on Iran from UK military bases, causing tension with Washington.
Not that US President Donald Trump seems to care about international law and convention but the UK tends, these days, to give it more consideration.
Whilst we play host to tens of thousands of US troops on bases throughout the UK, It has for decades been the UK’s prerogative to green-light offensive actions from its shores by those military personnel. This stems from the 1951 NATO Status of Forces Agreement of 1951, which was followed a year later by the Visiting Forces Act.
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But tension has really mounted, according to the mentality of the US President, as Trump appears to be annoyed with the UK for its police having arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Perhaps it puts more pressure on America to look at pushing for the FBI to act on the naming of him and others in the Epstein Files.
But the lack of permission for bombers to launch operations from UK bases, although not at all essential to a mission against Iran, could cause a serious rift between Keir Starmer and Trump. The ban likely comes from the fact that an attack on Iran may be deemed illegal since Tehran has not attacked the US.
The 1951 rules define a combat mission as when US aircraft are armed and ready to strike another country. And as such any bomber taking from, say, RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire, or Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, and heading for Iran would be considered part of a combat mission.
International law rules there is no difference between a state carrying out an attack and one which has supported that state if its government has prior knowledge “of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act”. In 1986 the UK gave the green light to the US to launch 18 F-111’s to bomb late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya after a terrorist bombing in Berlin.
Operation El Dorado Canyon was launched in reaction for the death of a US serviceman in that bombing after the US found what it called “exact, precise, and irrefutable” evidence of Libyan involvement. But this time is different and the UK government is likely simply sticking to legality- it can allow the US to refuel etc but just not launch the attack.
So on that occasion the attack was deemed legal. The United States is pressuring Iran to pull back both its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme, stop funding proxy forces such as Hezbollah and ease ill-treatment of opposition protesters.
And as Geneva were underway this week a huge US war-machine armada was building in the Persian Gulf, under the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. This, and its three guided missile destroyers, will be joined by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, the biggest warship in the world by the end of the weekend.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if it does not reach an agreement. He said Iran will find out “over the next probably ten days” if an agreement can be reached and whether strikes will be launched.
But the UK being seen to impede any aspect of threat towards Iran will have started a rift with Washington and may take a mammoth diplomatic intervention to heal.
