stated<\/a> that a March 1 agreement to allow the United States to use British bases to strike Iranian missiles to defend Arab Gulf countries and British citizens in the region would also apply to Iran\u2019s attacks on the critical global energy corridor.<\/p>\n\u201cThe agreement for the U.S. to use U.K. bases in the collective self-defense of the region includes U.S. defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d Downing Street stated.<\/p>\n
The government ministers also reaffirmed their commitment to \u201cnot getting drawn into the wider conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the March 1 agreement, the United States has used British bases in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Gloucestershire, England, in operations against Iran.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the announcement on Friday, while criticizing the U.K. for being too slow to agree to U.S. requests.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little surprised at the U.K. to be honest with you,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House. \u201cThey should have acted a lot faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his public statements, Trump has sent mixed messages about the need for assistance from U.S. allies to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, whose effective closure has sent shockwaves through global energy markets.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Trump said that \u201cwe don\u2019t need any help, actually,\u201d after countries like Japan and Australia said that they had no intention of agreeing to his request to send ships to help guard the strait.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Trump said that \u201cyou need a lot of help\u201d to re-open Hormuz.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need ships,\u201d Trump said. \u201cNATO could help us, but they so far haven\u2019t had the courage to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier on Friday, Trump posted on social media that \u201cNATO is a paper tiger\u201d and said that its members were \u201ccowards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi threatened the United Kingdom on Friday after U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer made the announcement about the bases.<\/p>\n
\u201cVast majority of the British people do not want any part in the Israel-U.S. war of choice on Iran,\u201d Aragchi wrote<\/a>. \u201cIgnoring his own people, Mr. Starmer is putting British lives in danger by allowing U.K. bases to be used for aggression against Iran. Iran will exercise its right to self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British government agreed on Friday to allow the United States to use U.K. military bases for operations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-486550","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\/486550","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=486550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}