Keir Starmer and Trump are putting on a puppet show for the cameras. Behind the scenes, Britain remains a junior imperialist partner working for the destruction of Iran.
Since the start of the US-Israeli airstrikes against Iran on 28 February 2026, the British government, led by Keir Starmer's Labour Party, has been actively deceiving the UK public about its role in the attempts to destroy the current Iranian government.
First, it's essential to understand Britain's centuries-long interference in Iran. Since the 1800s, Britain has been trying to control Iran for its own colonial hegemony of the region. During the second half of the 19th century, Britain colonised the south of Iran. In 1921, Britain supported a coup of the Ahmad Shah-led government to end Soviet influence in Tehran and become the controlling master of the rest of the country. This was later followed by yet another colonial coup d'état in 1953 of Mohammad Mosaddegh’s government, this time collaboratively engineered by the British and the US security services. The 1979 Islamic Revolution effectively ended British and American control of Iran. Since then, Britain and the US have jointly sought to discipline Iran until the opportunity presented itself to take control again of a country that has been a thorn in the side of Anglo-American imperialist world hegemony. That time is now.
On 01 March 2026, Keir Starmer and the UK's Ministry of Defence declared Britain would take a defensive posture in the Iran conflict. They stated that Britain would now allow the US Air Force to use its bases nationally and internationally to launch attacks against Iran. The UK government reiterated that it had no knowledge of the US and Israel's plans prior to the bombing raid that killed Ayatollah Khamenei and publicly distanced itself from the attack.
However, on 21 February 2026, the iPaper reported that since Tuesday, 17 February, "at least 28 US military flights have used airbases in the UK and Cyprus to carry out one of the largest build-ups of US military strength in the Middle East for decades.” They found that “flights have taken off and landed from US air force facilities based in the UK, including RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, where the Pentagon has long-standing access to airfields through a lease agreement.”
Similarly, on 20 February, Declassified UK put out a piece highlighting that "Several of Britain’s most advanced fighter jets, the F-35, were moved to Cyprus a fortnight ago to boost air defences in the eastern Mediterranean." That is, they were moved there around 06 February.
But of course, a plan like this doesn't come together overnight. Not forgetting the US's assassination of Iran's IRGC general Qasem Soleimani in 2020, on 20 January 2026, over a month before the latest strikes started, Declassified UK had published an article with the following:
"On Sunday and Monday, four US military transport aircraft departed from the US air base at Lakenheath in Suffolk with their destination believed to be the Muwaffaq Salti air base in Jordan. [...] Reports also suggest the US is deploying at least 12 F-15 fighter aircraft and four KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelling aircraft from Lakenheath to the Jordan base. The aircraft appear to be drawn from the US Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing, which is based across Lakenheath and RAF Feltwell, in Norfolk, and which hosts nearly 7,000 active-duty personnel, according to the US military.
The RAF also sent a military transport A400 Airbus to Tel Aviv on Monday which followed the dispatch last week of an A332 Airbus to Beersheba, next to Israel’s main air force base at Nevatim. Britain has also been sending military transport aircraft to Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia during the past week, although it is unclear whether these are routine flights."
None of this is being acknowledged in the mainstream press, in parliament, or anywhere. While the above could be put down to coincidence, it seems likely that Britain had allowed these US planes to land in Britain and must have suspected something big was about to happen. This suggests Britain has been instrumental in coordinating this attack on Iran, as it has done for centuries.
Keir Starmer, however, will continue to play publicly ignorant because it's working on the British public. The high-profile dispute between Starmer and Trump is purely for the cameras to protect the Labour Party's reputation and feed the Trump persona. It is but a puppet show. On 03 March, during a Channel 4 evening news broadcast, political editor Gary Gibbon stated that: "I understand from sources in Whitehall that intelligence [and] defence contacts with America—that important part of the [UK-US] relationship—carries on exactly as it did before." This point was later reiterated by the US Editor, Anushka Asthanana, during a broadcast on 16 March. This is precisely what matters: Anglo-American imperialism has a very clear, very destructive plan that is being executed behind closed doors; this has been happening for decades.
Britain is still very much one of the most central colonial, capitalist powers of the world, and its part in this re-colonisation of the Middle East must not go unrecognised just because the US is shouting louder. Equally, this yet again demonstrates that imperialism is in the Labour Party DNA (as it is for all parties in Britain), always has been, and always will be.
No collaboration, no sell-out. All victories to the anti-imperialist front!
Rohan Rice is a farm worker and occasional writer based in the UK. His work appears in People’s Dispatch, Morning Star, and Abolitionist Futures among other outlets.
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