The secret meetings where Starmer flip-flopped on Iran

At the beginning of February, with little overstatement, Sir Keir Starmer could claim his management of Donald Trump had been a roaring success.

In tricky circumstances, and with a fickle president, the Prime Minister had managed to secure concessions for Britain on US tariffs, a trade deal, several love-ins in front of the press and a state visit for the ages.

But all that has changed over the past three weeks, as transatlantic relations took an abrupt turn for the worse. Mr Trump was “very disappointed”, Sir Keir was a “loser”. Damningly, he was “not Winston Churchill”.

Until now, the behind-the-scenes conversations that led to this parlous state of affairs have been hidden, iceberg-like, behind diplomatic secrecy.

But a rare leak from one of Britain’s most secretive committees, the National Security Council (NSC), has exposed what Sir Keir and his ministers did to make Mr Trump so angry.

We now know that the US president made his first request to use British air bases to bomb Iran on Feb 11, a full 17 days before he launched his joint strikes with Israel.

Over the next seven days, ministers and government lawyers convened to debate whether America could legally use two bases – RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands – to bomb Iran without breaching international law.

The NSC convened and rejected the idea, using a legal opinion from Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, which argued that the UK would be viewed as an accomplice by the international courts if the American strikes were ruled illegal.

That message was communicated to the US and prompted a series of angry exchanges between the two governments – at a diplomatic level through their embassies; via direct contact between the White House and Downing Street; and between Sir Keir and Mr Trump.

It is unclear exactly when Sir Keir rejected that request, but it was at some point before Feb 19, when Mr Trump took to Truth Social to try to sink the Labour government’s deal to give away the Chagos Islands, once and for all.

“This land should not be taken away from the UK,” he said. “It may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia and the airfield located in Fairford in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime.”

Mr Trump had hoped that by using the British bases, the US could stage shorter flights to Iran, saving time and avoiding the need for as much mid-air refuelling.

But the UK’s decision was final, and the Pentagon was forced to draw up plans that did not involve Britain.

The next week, on Feb 26, the NSC was convened again to discuss the imminent strikes on Iran, which British officials believed were planned for the following morning.

The exact details of that meeting are disputed, but a source told The Spectator that Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, launched a broadside at the Americans, arguing in “legalistic” terms that the UK should not be involved in any strikes.

Mr Trump’s bombardments went ahead and British ministers duly distanced themselves from the White House, arguing that the attacks were not supported by UK forces in the region, which had been stationed there for purely defensive purposes.

On Feb 28, after the strikes had destroyed much of Iran’s military infrastructure and killed its supreme leader, Mr Trump asked again whether the UK would let him use RAF bases for “limited defensive” operations to take out Iranian missile sites.

This time, Sir Keir relented. After another meeting of the NSC and a series of calls with angry Middle Eastern leaders who felt abandoned by the UK, Sir Keir agreed to let the US run some missions from British bases.

His change of heart also came after an Iranian Shahed one-way attack drone hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and the Iranian regime carried out retaliatory strikes on US-allied sites across the Middle East.

On Thursday, he said that the threat to British personnel and civilians in the region convinced him to join forces with Mr Trump, telling a press conference that the UK would use its “military and diplomatic strength to protect our people” while “having the strength to stand firm by our values and our principles, no matter the pressure to do otherwise”.

Those words, by Sir Keir’s standards, represented a dressing down of Mr Trump and his bully-boy tactics.

But they pale in comparison to the response from the US. Hours later, the president was on the phone to more journalists to criticise Sir Keir, telling the New York Post: “It was very disappointing – his performance, having to do with our tremendous attack on a hostile nation.”

For officials tasked with protecting the special relationship at all costs, Mr Trump’s daily diatribes against the UK are becoming unbearable.

But for now, there is little they can do. The US president, a dealmaker, is disappointed that his generosity to Sir Keir has apparently been thrown back in his face.

“I was very surprised at Keir,” he sighed on Thursday, twisting the knife. “Very disappointed.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]