{"id":460561,"date":"2026-03-06T10:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T10:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460561\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T10:41:08","slug":"leak-from-secret-uk-meeting-about-us-attacks-on-iran-a-travesty-says-lammy-us-israel-war-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460561\/","title":{"rendered":"Leak from secret UK meeting about US attacks on Iran a travesty, says Lammy | US-Israel war on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Lammy has said it is an \u201cabsolute travesty\u201d that details were leaked from a top secret national security meeting on the US-Israel attacks on Iran and has called for an investigation.<\/p>\n

There were reports last weekend of cabinet splits at a national security council meeting, which is protected by the Official Secrets Act, over allowing the US to use British bases for the strikes against Iran.<\/p>\n

Keir Starmer suggested allowing the US to use the bases to carry out defensive strikes against Iranian targets at the meeting last Friday but was met with opposition from Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and Shabana Mahmood, according to the Spectator, a report which was then picked up by several media outlets.<\/p>\n

Permission to allow the bases to be used against Iran\u2019s missile sites was granted on Sunday after Tehran had launched a wave of retaliatory attacks against countries across the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Asked about the unity of the cabinet on Friday, Lammy told BBC Breakfast: \u201cIt\u2019s an absolute travesty that there would be any kind of leak from an NSC meeting and the reason I think that is that it must be right that ministers are allowed to make their assessment supported by the chief of defence staff our intelligence agencies and others and we do nothing that would put our people at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not get into any discussions we had at a national security council meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The justice secretary added: \u201cThe cabinet is absolutely united and supportive of a calm, cool head at this time of being clear we will not be involved in the offensive action but we will absolutely defend our allies and people across the region. The cabinet is entirely united behind the prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

A leak from the national security council is considered a serious breach. In 2019, Theresa May sacked<\/a> the then defence secretary, Gavin Williamson over a leak.<\/p>\n

Lammy repeated his assertion that any leak was a \u201ctravesty\u201d on Sky News and went further, calling for an investigation. \u201cI don\u2019t recognise those reports and I have to say I think it is a travesty that any anyone should report from a national security council \u2026 because of course it puts British lives at risk and I hope that is properly investigated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"RelievedRelieved European nationals return home after being stranded in Middle East \u2013 video<\/p>\n

At a press conference on Thursday, the prime minister would not be drawn into directly addressing the report by the Spectator. In response to a question from reporters about the unity of the cabinet and the UK decision not to allow the US to use UK bases to launch offensive action, Starmer set out a timeline of discussions between the government and the US.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cNo request from the US came in the specific terms that we acceded until Saturday afternoon. Therefore on Friday there was no concrete decision to be made.<\/p>\n

\u201cA decision had to be made when we had the request, that came in on Saturday during the course of the afternoon \u2013 we were already taking measures in relation to our own capability \u2013 that came in on Saturday afternoon, late in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe then, as you would have expected, went through the details with the US over the next day, and ultimately reached a decision on Sunday, which I announced then on Sunday evening, about eight or nine o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Lammy has said it is an \u201cabsolute travesty\u201d that details were leaked from a top secret national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-460561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460561","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=460561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}