Guardian Dumps Trump. It’s not in Britain’s national interest that Iran be reduced to smoking ruins.

 Sun 2:31 pm +00:00, 8 Mar 2026  1

posted by Tapestry

Nine days in, the conduct of the unjustified, illegal US-Israel war against Iran grows ever-more disproportionate, dishonourable and deranged, says The Guardian while the UK deploys more forces by the day.

The torpedoing of an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka by a US submarine demonstrated that for reckless Donald Trump, the whole world is his battlefield. Diplomacy, treacherously sabotaged by Washington, has been replaced by unceasing airstrikes that are murdering and maiming hundreds of Iranian civilians. Trump’s White House increasingly resembles a madhouse. War aims shift daily. A clueless, rambling president insists he must help pick Iran’s next ayatollah. Meanwhile, his “secretary for war”, Pete Hegseth, rants manically about killing without mercy.

Nine days in, it’s clear Iran’s leaders, those who survive, are not going to roll over in a repeat of Trump’s Venezuela coup. Their forces, though drastically outgunned, are succeeding in spreading pain across the Middle East, inundating defences with waves of drones and missiles. That’s no surprise. Iran warned of a region-wide conflict if attacked again. Trump is now at war with US allies, too, having adopted George W Bush’s crude Iraq war “for us or against us” maxim. The Gulf Arabs – and cruelly battered Lebanon – just want it to stop. Britain and Europe mostly want no part of it, but are being sucked in anyway. The global economy is tumbling into crisis. In Trump’s war on the world, there are no heroes, only victims. Spain’s defiant leader, Pedro Sánchez, is one exception.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, already charged with war crimes in Gaza, and Trump must now face prosecution by the international criminal court for atrocities perpetrated in Iran, notably the appalling 28 February bombing of a school in Minab. They should both be sanctioned by the UK and all other governments that still respect the UN charter, human rights and the rule of law. And their countries should be sanctioned, too. Many Americans and Israelis deplore their leaders’ crazed behaviour. Yet these two thugs act in their name. Concerned citizens, failed by an emasculated US Congress and Israeli Knesset, must demand a halt to the mayhem.

Related video: Trump accuses Starmer of trying to ‘join’ Iran war ‘after we’ve already won’ (Daily Mail)

It’s long been obvious Trump is no friend to Britain. But this latest act of lethal hubris, of which the UK received no advance warning, shows he and his administration must now be considered an enemy. Just look at the facts. The US (like Russia in Ukraine) has launched an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign state. Its claim of an “imminent” threat is unsupported by evidence. Its armed forces are unrestrained, lacking any rules of engagement. Moral and legal considerations are ignored; it has brazenly assassinated a head of state. This US-led rampage, this homicidal turkey shoot, is terrorising and displacing millions while disrupting trade, travel and energy supplies. What more proof is needed that the US, an outlaw state like Israel, is a hostile power that fundamentally threatens the UK?

It’s not in Britain’s national interest that Iran be reduced to smoking ruins. It is not in the UK interest that the Tehran regime, vile though it undoubtedly is, be driven to adopt asymmetric tactics (such as terror attacks in European cities) in order to survive. It is certainly not in the interest of Britain and neighbouring countries that Iran fragment into Iraq-style anarchy amid mooted uprisings by Kurds and other ethnic minorities. The ensuing refugee exodus would dwarf that from Syria a decade ago. Most saliently, it is not in the UK interest that the rule of law, and the laws of war, be casually eviscerated, thereby accelerating disintegration of the “global order”.

Mobster Trump’s latest crimes follow close on the heels of his kidnapping of Venezuela’s president; his threats to invade Greenland, sovereign territory of a loyal Nato ally; his hypocritical upgrading of the US nuclear arsenal while prating about Iran’s hypothetical nukes; his sabotage of UN action on climate; his punitive global trade tariffs; his intrusive support for Europe’s far-right parties and Reform UK; and perhaps most bitter of all, his unforgivable betrayal of Ukraine and appeasement of Russia. All these actions adversely affect the British people and the British state.

Unlike Washington, successive UK governments have tried to maintain a dialogue with the Islamists who toppled the US-backed shah in 1979. Lacking diplomatic relations, the US was absent from the conversation. As a result, American ignorance of contemporary Iran is profound. To suggest the regime and its proxy militias will tamely surrender is simply crass. Economic sanctions, reinforced by Trump when he foolishly reneged on the 2015 UK-backed nuclear deal with Tehran, are used by the mullahs to excuse failings and justify abuses. The US repeatedly missed chances to boost reformists such as ex-president Hassan Rouhani by offering sanctions relief. The greater the country’s impoverishment, the worse the social strains, the tighter the grip of repressive, misogynistic hardline clerical and military factions. Partly at least, today’s Iran is of the US’s making.

Iran desperately needs a fresh start. The theocracy symbolised by its assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has long ago had its day. Many, probably most, Iranians yearn passionately for an open, freer, more prosperous, pluralist, pro-western society. But this destructive, un-thought-through US-Israeli regression into the worst excesses of imperialist vandalism crushes hopes of peaceful change – the only kind that lasts – and hastens a collapse into warring camps. What may emerge is not a reborn, friendly Iran but a fractured country held hostage by a more brutal, paranoid, ever-threatening hardline rump regime embroiled in endless conflict with its people and the west.

Related: US and Israel threaten major escalation as airstrikes bombard Iran and Lebanon

It’s argued that Britain is so closely enmeshed with the US in matters of defence, security and intelligence-gathering that it cannot afford a definitive break over Iran. This is a counsel of despair. For most of its long history, Britain has somehow got by without always highly conditional American help. It could do so again, though it might be painful for a while. It would be a positive boon, for example, if the UK’s unaffordable, undesirable Trident nuclear missile submarines, which rely on US technology, were scrapped. Dependencies such as these give unstable, war-addicted Trump dangerous leverage over the UK. Best be rid of them before he uses it.

Nine days and counting. How much longer? Weeks? Months? Trump and Israel’s manipulative Trump-whisperer must be stopped, both for Iranians’ sake and for the future peace and security of the Middle East, Britain and its remaining allies. The existential threat to democratic values, laws and freedoms posed by Trump, Netanyahu and authoritarian bedfellows such as Vladimir Putin is ubiquitous – and growing. For Britain’s Keir Starmer, an honourable man undeservedly mocked by a sleazebag, this is the biggest, most important lesson of the war: know your enemy – and act accordingly.

This is Trump’s war of choice. But Britain has choices, too. Two hundred and fifty years after the American colonists broke free of empire, it’s time for a British declaration of independence.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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Ms Cooper rejected criticism from former Labour leader Sir Tony Blair, who said the UK should have backed the US over Iran from day one.

She stressed that it was important to “learn the lessons” from the Iraq War, insisting that the Government was acting in Britain’s national interest.

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of being “too scared to make foreign interventions” and insisted Britain is “in this war whether Keir Starmer likes it or not”.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski argued: “ Starmer’s attempt to play both sides has failed.

“He’s dragged us into the war, and still managed to damage our reputation with the USA.”

Liberal Democat leader Sir Ed Davey accused both Mrs Badenoch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of wanting Britain to “blindly follow Trump into his reckless war”.

Ms Cooper shied away from saying Britain was at war with Iran, describing it instead as “providing defensive support in a conflict”.

Trump has repeatedly criticised Sir Keir’s decision not to authorise the initial wave of American strikes on Iran.

In recent days he has branded the Prime Minister “not Winston Churchill” and described Britain’s response to the crisis as “very disappointing”.

A week ago, Sir Keir approved the use of UK bases for defensive operations against Iranian missile sites threatening British citizens and allies in the Gulf.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Defence confirmed American forces had begun using British bases for “defensive” operations such as targeting Iranian missile sites.

A 146ft B-1 Lancer bomber first touched down at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on Friday evening, with three more arriving the following morning.

British forces are also increasing their own presence in the region.

A Merlin helicopter is being deployed to provide aerial surveillance, while RAF Typhoon and F-35 fighter jets continue flying operations from bases in Jordan, Qatar and Cyprus to take down drones.

Trump said his war with Iran may only end with its military and rulers wiped out, as Tehran moved on Sunday towards picking a new Supreme Leader while missiles and drones flew across the Middle East.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had said the country’s temporary leadership council had approved suspending air strikes on nearby countries including the Gulf states unless an attack on Iran came from those nations.

But in a sign of deep divisions in Tehran, attacks resumed within hours.

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries on Saturday and early Sunday, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.

At least four people were killed when an Israeli strike hit an apartment in the Ramada hotel building in central Beirut early on Sunday, with Israel saying it was targeting Iranian commanders operating ⁠in the Lebanese capital.

A huge blaze lit up the skyline over Tehran after a major oil depot was hit on Saturday.

Flights in and out of Dubai International Airport were interrupted on Saturday morning after passengers were ushered down into train tunnels as several blasts were heard and the alert sounded over a suspected drone attack.

Falling shrapnel from interception of projectiles from Iran caused minor damage to the facade of a tower in Dubai Marina, an area with many other luxury high rises, according to local officials.

In Britain, the head of the armed forces, Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, indicated that the UK’s military role could expand.

He warned that “campaigns and conflicts evolve over time”.

The Government has faced criticism over the defence of Cyprus after a British military base on the island was hit by a drone earlier this week.

A Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Dragon, is being prepared to sail to the eastern Mediterranean, although it is not expected to depart until next week.

France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have already deployed naval assets to defend Cyprus.

Officials said the Type 45 destroyer is being fitted out for a potentially lengthy deployment rather than being rushed to the region for a short mission.

Meanwhile efforts continue to evacuate more than 100,000 British nationals still stranded in Gulf countries.