LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday Britain would not be \u200bdrawn into a wider war in Iran but would work with allies on a \u201cviable\u201d plan to reopen the key Strait of Hormuz, a task he said would be \u201cdifficult\u201d without de-escalation in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
At a press conference aimed at easing public concern over rising energy costs, Starmer again justified his decision not to take part in the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran, a move US President Donald Trump has criticized, going as far as calling the British leader \u201cno Churchill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer did not rule out any action to reopen the strait after Trump said at the weekend that Britain, China, \u200cFrance, Japan and South \u200cKorea should send warships to the region to help unblock \u200bit. \u200cBut \u2060the British \u200bleader \u2060said any move would need to be agreed by as \u201cmany partners as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Japan, Australia have both said they would not send naval vessels to the strait. Greece and Germany also ruled out joining any military operations there, with Berlin adding it was not a job for the NATO alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, we have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure stability in the (oil) market. That is not a simple task,\u201d Starmer told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019re working with all of our allies, including our European partners, to bring together a viable collective plan that can \u200crestore freedom of navigation in the region as quickly as possible \u200cand ease the economic impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
About a fifth of global \u200boil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through \u200cthe strait, a narrow passage of water between Iran and Oman. Tehran\u2019s effective shutting of the \u200cstrait has sent oil prices to more than $100 a barrel.<\/p>\n
That has seen energy prices leap for consumers, and Starmer said it was his priority to support working people with cost-of-living pressures.<\/p>\n
He set out the first financial support, a \u00a353-million ($70.30 million) package for the most vulnerable households which rely on heating oil, and said his Labour \u200cgovernment would keep any other measures under review as it was hard to predict what could happen in three to six months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
British domestic energy prices will largely be shielded by a tariff-pricing cap that will be in place until July. Were the impact to extend beyond that, the government would face calls to repeat the support Britain gave to households at the start of the Ukrainian war, when it stumped up \u00a340 billion.<\/p>\n
The quickest way to ease cost-of-living pressures, Starmer said, was to de-escalate the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Asked for the specifics on what Britain could contribute after it brought its last minehunter in the region back to Britain this month, he reiterated that it had autonomous mine-hunting systems in the area and was looking at other options.<\/p>\n
The Iran conflict has strained ties \u2014 the so-called special relationship \u2014 between Britain and the US, but Starmer said he would rather protect Britain\u2019s interests than get dragged deeper into the \u200bwar.<\/p>\n
After a conversation with Trump on Sunday, \u200bStarmer said he had a \u201cgood call\u201d with the US leader and that the two had spoken \u201cin the way that you would expect between two allies and two leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday Britain would not be \u200bdrawn into a wider war in Iran but would work with allies on a \u201cviable\u201d plan to reopen the key Strait of Hormuz, a task he said would be \u201cdifficult\u201d without de-escalation in the Middle East. At a press conference aimed at easing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95174","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\/95174","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=95174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95202,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95174\/revisions\/95202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}