Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, March 10, 2026

LONDON — Just a year ago, Sir Kier Starmer, Britain’s Prime Minister was being hailed as a statesman for having defused a nasty political dustup between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky over Ukraine policy. A White House showdown threatened to derail American support for beleaguered Ukraine then in its third year of war against the invading Russians.

Starmer set up the London Summit on Ukraine for the Europeans at Lancaster House where NATO played nice, recited the mantra of Transatlantic solidarity and agreed to help Ukraine. Starmer came out the hero and peacemaker; The Economist put him on its cover with a Churchillian poise.

The War

A year later in the midst of the recent Iran war, Britain’s role is notably absent and militarily lost at sea. Starmer’s Labour Party twists and turns like a whirligig in the winds of war as the U.S. and Israel are pounding Iran’s Islamic Republic to replace Teheran’s theocratic regime.

His initial dithering support to the U.S. military to use its bases in Britain and Diego Garcia at the onset of war, trumpeted in the name of serving international law, rested on a hard political calculation; fear of Iraqi precedent. Starmer sees the specter of Saddam’s Iraq in every dark corner.

Starmer’s actions must be viewed in the shadow of Tony Blair and the 2003 Iraq war. Then the British PM both diplomatically and militarily supported the Bush Administration policy to invade Saddam’s Iraq. We know the wider story, and Blair was soon criticized as playing poodle to American power. Equally Starmer is watching his Labour left flank where he’s already unpopular (about 18 percent approval); and a few months ago was nearly ousted as Prime Minister.

Sir Kier for all his faults stands in the center-right of Labour. The Left waits in the wings. So this year he talks tough at Trump rather than cooperation with Trump.

President Trump in a defining jibe, slammed Starmer’s indecision as this is “Not Winston Churchill we are dealing with.”

Ms. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative opposition stated, “Why is it under this Prime Minister that international law always seems to be at odds with our national interest?”

Even former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair rebuked Starmer for not backing the United States.

Importantly, the cherished Anglo/American Special relationship is tarnished but not over.

The Regional Repercussions

But here’s a wider issue. Since the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, the Teheran regime has lashed out will massive missile attacks not only at Israel, U.S. military bases and diplomatic facilities in the region but have attacked at least a dozen Arab states who would have rather stayed on the sidelines. By attacking the Arab Gulf states, Iran has made new enemies.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates/Dubai and Bahrain: These rich showcase sheikdoms are brittle like their glass, brass and steel skyscrapers.

The Gulf states host at least 300,000 British residents who live there for work in a largely tax free and pleasant atmosphere, kind of a golden cage nearby Islamic Iran. These countries are shocked by a lack of British military resolve as the unintended consequences of the conflict spillover.

The Times of London scolded editorially that PM Starmer’s failure to rush to the aid of Persian Gulf allies under Iranian attack, “has dealt a body blow to Britain’s credibility in a strategically vital region.”

The Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been targeted by Iranian drones which hit the UK military base at Akrotiri. Britain’s sovereign military bases in Cyprus, long a forgotten security asset, were thus jolted into the headlines. Where was the Royal Navy to provide defense? A Royal Navy air-defense destroyer the Dragon is nearly a week away. In the meantime, the French Navy and the Greeks have come to the rescue, in an acute embarrassment for an underfunded British military.

The Road Ahead

Indeed, Islamic Iran must face the consequences for its actions both against its own people and globally for nearly a half century; Domestic repression, support of terrorist proxies and the threat of a renewed nuclear program brought this ancient nation to near ruin under the mullah regime.

The conflict has rocked global markets especially with surging petroleum prices over $100 per barrel. Britain’s very nervous given the already high prices of heating fuel and gasoline. Dangers from the closed Strait of Hormuz shipping-lane loom for European and East Asian markets.

Yet there’s a counterforce. Amid a sea of green, white and red Lion and Sun Iranian flags, huge Iranian pro-democracy demonstrations in favor of the USA and exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi have rocked central London.

Iranians have reawakened! The day of Iran’s freedom approaches.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  Whither Britain? PM Starmer goes wobbly on backing USA; Key Gulf allies get pounded