{"id":455010,"date":"2026-03-03T08:45:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/455010\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T08:45:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:45:34","slug":"iran-conflict-worsens-uk-defense-dilemmas-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/455010\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran conflict worsens UK defense dilemmas\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starmer has embraced the idea of closer defense ties with Europe since taking office, and signed a new mutual defense pact with Germany \u2013 as well as refreshing the Lancaster House agreement with France. He has also promised to work more closely with the EU on defense financing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Calvin Bailey, a Labour MP on the Commons defence committee, said: \u201cThe clear shift in US focus to the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, evidenced again by current events, shows again how important it is to galvanize our defense relationships with European partners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Starmer\u2019s early response to the Iran strikes saw him reach for that forum, as the E3 issued a joint statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The situation Britain faces is similar to that of France, which has naval bases in the Gulf. Ben Judah, a former adviser to Starmer\u2019s government on foreign policy, said the U.K. ought to consider working with France to \u201cestablish an independent defensive mission\u201d that is not under American command.<\/p>\n<p>London has so far resisted calls by allies to adopt a posture that is more explicitly independent of the U.S. And it&#8217;s not clear that working more closely with European partners would be any easier. <\/p>\n<p>While Greece <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/greece-warship-fighter-jet-cyprus-drone-strike\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deployed warships and fighter jets<\/a> to Cyprus, Cyprus\u2019s government openly expressed dissatisfaction with the U.K., effectively accusing Britain of dragging it into the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Arnold argued it was &#8220;particularly painful&#8221; for the U.K. to face the prospect of further conflict in the region, as &#8220;it just sucks capacity out domestically and internationally, exactly when the Europeans want all of the focus to be on Ukraine and Europe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Labour\u2019s Bailey warned: \u201cContinuing to arm Ukraine\u2019s defense and maintaining deterrence against Russia requires both a faster pace of defense spending [by the U.K.] and strategic restraint [by the U. S.] that we are not seeing right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starmer has embraced the idea of closer defense ties with Europe since taking office, and signed a new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[98826,69121,164237,5704,817,459,10521,140,141,142,2992,819,59,145,57,58,2043,585,1805,420,632,151,152,35826,50,547,154,1351,56,157,54,158,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-455010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-air-defense","9":"tag-airspace","10":"tag-ben-judah","11":"tag-conflict","12":"tag-cooperation","13":"tag-crisis","14":"tag-cyprus","15":"tag-defense","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-drones","18":"tag-foreign-policy","19":"tag-france","20":"tag-gb","21":"tag-germany","22":"tag-great-britain","23":"tag-greatbritain","24":"tag-greece","25":"tag-iran","26":"tag-john-healey","27":"tag-keir-starmer","28":"tag-middle-east","29":"tag-military","30":"tag-missiles","31":"tag-missions","32":"tag-news","33":"tag-research","34":"tag-russia","35":"tag-security","36":"tag-uk","37":"tag-ukraine","38":"tag-united-kingdom","39":"tag-united-states","40":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}