On March 1, NZ Prime Minister Chrstopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters echoed Washington\u2019s lies justifying the war. They condemned \u201cIran\u2019s nuclear programme, its destabilising activities in the region and elsewhere, and its repression of its own people.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a widely derided \u201ctrain wreck\u201d press conference the next day, Luxon refused to say whether the attacks on Iran and assassination of its leadership during ongoing negotiations were legal or not. He declared it would be \u201cup to the US and Israel to explain the legal basis for their attacks.\u201d Asked whether he supported the bombing of the school, Luxon said \u201cI\u2019m not in a position to judge that from sitting in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
With an election approaching in November, Luxon\u2019s bumbling responses have intensified the crisis within the coalition government, already deeply unpopular after nearly three years of brutal attacks on jobs, wages and living standards. A Curia poll last week showed Luxon\u2019s National Party sinking to 28.4 percent support, and media commentators are speculating about a possible leadership challenge.<\/p>\n
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New Zealand Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins. [AP Photo\/Robert Kitchin]<\/p>\n
The opposition parties, conscious of powerful anti-war sentiment, are moving to keep any movement under control by feigning opposition to the war. Former Labour PM and ex-UN official Helen Clark called Luxon and Peters\u2019 statements \u201ca disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current Labour leader Chris Hipkins told parliament on March 3: \u201cThe US and Israeli bombing of Iran is a clear breach of international law,\u201d with \u201cno evidence that these attacks were a necessary act of self-defence.\u201d He added that \u201cNew Zealand has stood up before and we should stand up again now. New Zealand opposed the US invasion of Iraq and history proved that was the correct decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Hipkins\u2019 statements were echoed by Labour\u2019s former foreign minister Phil Goff (1999\u20132005), who wrote in a Stuff op-ed on March 4 that \u201cregime change in the way the US is trying to do it has a poor track record.\u201d In Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, he declared, \u201chundreds of thousands of people were killed without achieving better governance and improvements in the lives of the people.\u201d The government\u2019s stance is \u201cfurther evidence that New Zealand has abandoned its independent foreign policy,\u201d Goff said.<\/p>\n The Labour Party is engaged in blatant historical falsification to cover up its own pro-war track record. NZ\u2019s then Labour-led government\u2014which included the pseudo-left Alliance Party\u2014was among the first to send troops to the Afghanistan invasion in 2001, in a bid to fully restore relations with the US following the \u201canti-nuclear\u201d posturing in the 1980s, and as a quid pro quo for Washington\u2019s endorsement of its own neo-colonial operations in the Pacific.<\/p>\n Goff played a particularly foul role in NZ\u2019s Afghanistan deployment, glorifying the illegal neo-colonial war. In 2001 he told the UN Security Council it was necessary to bring to an end \u201cthe absence of legitimate government and law and order in Afghanistan in which terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking has thrived.\u201d<\/p>\n Helen Clark\u2019s Labour government deployed 61 Defence Force (NZDF) personnel, including 35 army engineers, to Iraq in 2003 to protect NZ\u2019s commercial<\/a> interests and ties with US imperialism. From 2015\u20132020 over 100 NZ troops were again stationed there as part of a joint operation<\/a> with Australia. A small number of NZ military personnel remained in Iraq until 2023.<\/p>\n The last Labour government, in which Hipkins was a senior minister and in 2023 served as prime minister, strengthened the alliance with the US and sent soldiers to Britain to assist in training Ukrainian conscripts. Goff, then New Zealand\u2019s High Commissioner in London, publicised NZ\u2019s role in support of the US-NATO war against Russia, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s call for a supposedly \u201cindependent\u201d foreign policy in which New Zealand serves as an \u201chonest broker\u201d between warring parties is a transparent fraud. Labour agrees that NZ must remain, in Hipkins\u2019 words, a \u201cclose ally\u201d of the Trump regime, which is rampaging across the globe and seeking to establish a fascist dictatorship in the US.<\/p>\n Available from Mehring Books<\/p>\n The struggle against imperialism and for workers\u2019 power in Iran<\/p>\n A pamphlet by Keith Jones<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It should be recalled that in October and November 2023 Hipkins, then prime minister, openly backed<\/a> Israel\u2019s murderous assault on Gaza and slandered opponents of the genocide as antisemitic. There is no doubt that if NZ Labour was leading the government today, its position would be similar to that of the British and Australian Labour governments, which have lined up in support of the war on Iran.<\/p>\n Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson echoed Hipkins\u2019 statements in parliament, calling on the government to condemn the strikes on Iran. She declared that \u201cIsrael and the United States are escalating the unchecked genocide of Palestinians into an all-out war in the Middle East. Their disregard for international law, human rights and the sanctity of human life is the greatest threat to peace on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n The Greens, however, spent six years in a coalition government with Labour from 2017 to 2023, which strengthened the alliance with the US. The party argued<\/a> for a major increase in NZ\u2019s military spending, and tacitly endorsed the Defence Force\u2019s recent demand for a rapid increase in recruiting<\/a>, as part of efforts to integrate the country into US war plans against China.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2f94a743-ac1d-47ab-849f-376aee4f9c78.png\"\/)
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