Keir Starmer’s immediate response to the Israeli-US attack on Iran last weekend was sensible and correct. Donald Trump had lied that the US was at risk of imminent attack, and had presented no coherent reason for going to war. Even after Starmer weakened and allowed the US to use British bases, although it did not really need them, Trump was furious. He accused Starmer of being “no Winston Churchill”. Starmer should have been equally furious and said Trump was no Franklin Roosevelt – more George W Bush.

Britain is now contending with an unreliable, mendacious and warmongering ally across the Atlantic. It surely must hold itself consistent and principled at a deeply uncertain time. But does its Tory opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, agree? She goes to her spring party conference this week having hurled abuse at Starmer in parliament, supporting Trump on the dubious grounds that: “We’re in this war, whether they like it or not.” This appeared to be a confession of weakness, that other states can order Britons to go to war. As it was, Starmer found he had a navy left him by Badenoch’s party with hardly any seaworthy destroyers. It was surely a moment for a joint stance, not dispatch box point-scoring.

This war in Iran shows no signs of being even remotely popular. A British YouGov poll this week had 49% opposing the US’s action and just 28% in support. Half also opposed the decision to let the US use British bases. The US is even less enthusiastic. Just one in four Americans back Trump’s bombing campaign. Many of his usual cheerleaders have parted company with him, notably his greatest fan, Tucker Carlson, who accuses him of being in Benjamin Netanyahu’s pocket. When Trump shouts “Maga is me. Maga loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too,” his supporters cringe. This is dangerous narcissistic disorder. Even such arch-influencers on the far right as Nick Fuentes, in his 2 March podcast, declared “something has gone horribly wrong”. Are Badenoch and Reform’s Nigel Farage really to the right of Fuentes and Carlson?

Iran is precisely the sort of open-ended military intervention that Trump was elected to stop. His fumbling justifications show that, as Carlson and reports from Israel indicate, its initiative and timing were entirely Netanyahu’s. Trump’s team were negotiating a possible deal at the time. The attack was a replica of Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in 2024. They had a tag on Ali Khamenei and dared not miss the opportunity. Mossad sources in Tel Aviv are openly ridiculing the CIA’s attempt to claim authorship.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in effect admitted this to Congress, that the attack was Israel’s idea, not the US’s. Trump joined on the dubious grounds that the US feared an Iranian response against American bases. In reality, it appeared that Trump simply grabbed a moment for glory.

What could have been a limited Venezuela-style decapitation of the Iran regime then escalated into the most unproductive form of military aggression, mass bombing. Trump had to admit that his boasted destruction of Iran’s nuclear capability last June was not as effective as was claimed at the time. How else could a nuclear-armed Iran now be an imminent threat to American citizens? This was a direct echo of what Trump’s predecessor, George W Bush, claimed of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Every modern war seems to start with a lie.

Bush and his acolyte Tony Blair at least had the guts to invade Iraq. Trump’s faith in the use of aerial bombardment rather echoes the Lyndon Johnson-era promise to “bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age”. When Johnson asked Britain’s Harold Wilson to support the venture – with even a token “platoon of bagpipes” – he was furious when Wilson absolutely refused. The special relationship survived.

As for Trump also seeming to echo the Vietnam My Lai massacre by apparently bombing an Iranian girls’ school, at least after My Lai the soldiers responsible faced trial. The US’s bombers never face trial. They just plead collateral damage. The only question now is will Trump kill as many Iranian civilians as did Khamenei during the recent protests. He can surely say goodbye to his Board of Peace.

It is hard to imagine a war from which Britain’s political leaders of all parties should more want to distance themselves. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the country’s defence. This year is the 70th anniversary of the Suez fiasco. After it, British governments of both parties agreed with the US’s President Eisenhower that it was time for Britain to stop trying to sustain imperial outreach. It should eventually withdraw all forces east of Suez.

Thus it was promised, but successive governments found it phenomenally hard to achieve. Everywhere they itched to intervene. They blindly fought unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They maintained bases in the Chagos Islands and the Gulf just to seem macho. The defence lobby mumbled nonsense about “punching above our weight” and “keeping Britons safe on their streets”. All they needed to do was make sure Nato really stayed North Atlantic.

At present, the world’s two most heavily armed powers, Russia and the US, are ruled by egotists brandishing vast arsenals to secure their regimes and boost their standing. Both leaders are now engaged in wars of personal choice. Trump may once have been averse to “forever wars”, but he befriended an Israeli leader who had nothing to lose from sadistic aggression against his neighbours. It was a terrible mistake and Britain should have nothing to do with it.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

US-Israel war on Iran

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