LONDON: Keir Starmer said Britain would respond to the escalating conflict in the Middle East with a \u201ccool head\u201d after President Donald Trump chastised the prime minister for failing to provide sufficient support for his strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n
Britain, historically a staunch ally of Washington, initially refused to allow its military bases to be used by the US for its assault on \u200cTehran, only \u200ctempering that position when Iran attacked its \u200bneighbors \u2014 \u200callowing \u2060UK \u200bbases to \u2060be used for limited defensive strikes.<\/p>\n
Trump responded by castigating Starmer three times, including in the Oval Office on Tuesday where he told reporters \u201cThis is not Winston Churchill that we\u2019re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer, who had previously said any British military action must have a \u201cviable, thought-through plan,\u201d told parliament on Wednesday that the so-called \u2060special relationship was on display every day in \u200cthe conflict, and didn\u2019t hang \u200con the words of the US president.<\/p>\n
Citing \u200bAmerican planes flying from \u200cBritish bases, British jets protecting US bases and the sharing \u200cof intelligence, he said: \u201cThat is the special relationship in action.<\/p>\n
\u201cHanging on to President Trump\u2019s latest words is not the special relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer said he knew people across Britain were worried about the potential for escalation, \u200cand as a result he said Britain would act \u201cwith clarity, with purpose and with a \u2060cool head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer has \u2060been criticized from all sides at home for the decision, with opponents on the left calling for him to condemn the military action. On the right, opposition leaders Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage attacked Starmer for failing to back Britain\u2019s key security and intelligence ally.<\/p>\n
Starmer said Britain had been liaising closely with the United States for weeks on pre-deploying military assets to the region.<\/p>\n
After an Iranian-made Shahed drone hit the runway on the British Akrotiri base on the island \u200bof Cyprus, London said \u200bit would deploy HMS Dragon, an air-defense destroyer, along with additional helicopters with counter-drone capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Keir Starmer said Britain would respond to the escalating conflict in the Middle East with a \u201ccool head\u201d after President Donald Trump chastised the prime minister for failing to provide sufficient support for his strikes on Iran. Britain, historically a staunch ally of Washington, initially refused to allow its military bases to be used …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94630,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94613\/revisions\/94630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}