Reports of the death of the special relationship are greatly exaggerated. Donald Trump might be having a pop at Sir Keir Starmer for not immediately falling into line on Iran, but the underlying bedrock of the US and UK’s intertwined military and intelligence alliance remains unchanged.

On Tuesday, Trump escalated his criticism of Starmer, widely taken as a fresh example of how publicly strained the two allies’ relationship has become. “This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with”, he said, in a news conference in the Oval Office, cross because he couldn’t immediately use the British-controlled Chagos Islands.

But this is part of a pattern of behaviour from a US President who isn’t shy about expressing his frustration in public, only for his administration to crack on as usual behind the scenes via diplomatic channels, intelligence agencies and promoting mutual business investment.The UK Prime Minister, meanwhile, under domestic constraints, is doing his lawyerly best to show the Americans he doesn’t agree with their war.

“This Government does not believe in regime change from the skies,” Starmer said on Monday, also implying he doesn’t think the US bombardment of Tehran is the result of careful planning. He also offered up a rebuke over the legality of the US’s actions: “I will not commit our military personnel to unlawful action,” the Prime Minister said.

The US-UK relationship appears to have gone downhill since an early bonhomie. After Starmer pushed back against Trump’s designs on Greenland earlier in the year, the US President has turned on his ally – criticising the deal ceding sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, raising tariffs’ and insultingly dismissing Britain’s role fighting alongside US troops in the Afghanistan war.

But behind the scenes British officials are not worried. One senior source said they “eye-roll” at the idea the special relationship is dead, recounting all the times the two nations – if you were to believe the headlines – seemed on the brink of breaking off relations.

There have been several recent examples: when Barack Obama criticised Brexit, when Trump pressured Theresa May over Chinese telecoms company Huawei, and when Joe Biden attacked Boris Johnson over peace in Northern Ireland over Brexit. “Those were all heralded as special relationship ‘apocalypse moments’. Yet the UK-US edifice is far deeper than a spat. Today we invest more, create more jobs, partner more in defence and intelligence than ever before. That’s the glue,” the source said.

The US and UK are each other’s largest investors, with trade between the two worth around £315bn in 2024; and each creates more than a million jobs in the other’s country.

Meanwhile, Trump has form in lobbing abuse at other leaders who don’t fall in behind him. Just ask Emmanuel Macron, victim of the US President’s mimicking and insults. Or ask Mark Carney, whom Trump accused of ingratitude after the Canadian called for medium-sized nations to club together to resist aggressive superpowers.

Nonetheless, Trump’s erratic behaviour has had a strategic impact on Britain’s foreign policy. Starmer made a significant pivot at the Munich Security Conference last month when he moved away from his long-held stance of refusing to choose between the US and European Union, urging other continental partners to deepen co-operation and reduce over-reliance on American military contributions to the continent’s security.

As for the spooks, nothing has changed. “It’s business as usual,” a British intelligence source said. “We just get on with the day job despite what is going on at the top.”

In London, as around the world, officials are looking to explain Trump’s motivation, asking why he has chosen to attack Tehran now. Some are tempted by what US observers term a “Wag the Dog moment”, a reference to the 1997 movie satire starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, in which a spin doctor and Hollywood producer manufacture a war in Albania to distract from a presidential sex scandal.

Jeffrey Epstein notwithstanding, that’s a simplistic argument. Perhaps more tellingly, Trump is rapidly running out of time. If November’s mid-terms go against him, the President could soon find himself in lame-duck territory. There is already a question mark hovering over Trump’s mandate for war. Having sold himself as “pro-peace” just over a year ago, he’s instead ordered strikes on seven foreign nations. Give it another year and he won’t be in a position to launch anything like this sort of incursion.

Most wars have an underlying domestic political bent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like Trump, has elections later in the year. Unlike Trump, his own job is on the line. A considerable number of Israelis believe Netanyahu is to blame for the security shortcomings that allowed Hamas to launch an attack on October 7, 2023. Achieving a decisive victory over Tehran would represent a significant stride towards electoral redemption.

There are shifting rationales coming from Washington for the current military operation. The US and allies were concerned by the speed with which Iran regrouped after the 12-day war in June and pursued its missile programmes. In Maga circles that’s now where the emphasis lies; focus has moved onto Tehran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles that pose a danger to US bases and allied nations in the Middle East, rather than its nuclear programme.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed on Saturday that Iran was likely to be one week from possessing material suitable for industrial-scale bomb production. That’s despite the US Defence Intelligence Agency saying last year that Iran could develop a “militarily viable” intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability”. Hardly imminent.

What’s more, several days into the conflict and following more than a thousand air strikes, American and Israeli weaponry has predominantly spared Iran’s principal nuclear facilities, indicating they are not presently regarded as a primary threat.

With a shifting narrative to justify the war, the Prime Minister said only that late on Sunday he had approved a separate American request to use British bases, in order to conduct operations for what Starmer described as “specific and limited” defensive purposes, in the form of targeting Iranian missile facilities.

Whatever the legalities, Starmer could make the political case to back the US, should he wish to. But there is no appetite for that. He’s under party pressure, especially after Labour was beaten into third place in the Gorton and Denton by-election by the left-wing Greens last week. Starmer is also well aware of the scars Labour carries from Iraq, and the reluctance of voters to join another war in the Middle East and the ensuing hike in oil prices.

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Interventionist policies in the Middle East have proved problematic for American presidencies over the decades. The failure of Jimmy Carter’s unsuccessful 1980 operation to liberate American hostages in Iran stays within institutional memory. And the UK suffers too when it follows suit. Sir Tony Blair is still remembered for following George W. Bush into his prolonged and ultimately unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The resistance of Harold Wilson to President Lyndon B Johnson’s entreaties to help the US in Vietnam proved clear-sighted. Some in Labour circles are determined Starmer should be a Wilson, not a Blair.

But what people often forget about Wilson is that despite avowed public opposition, the UK provided the US with intelligence and logistical help in Vietnam. Similarly, in the 1960s, as now, the US and UK economies were heavily intertwined. There’s just no withdrawing from the special relationship, whatever temporary spat is taking place at the top of government.

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