Ministers gave the US permission to strike Iranian missile sites<\/a> targeting the strait of Hormuz from UK bases including Diego Garcia on Friday afternoon. Previously, UK bases were only being used to strike Iranian sites targeting British allies and interests in Gulf states.<\/p>\nIran reacted angrily, with its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claiming it would \u201cexercise its right to self-defence\u201d. Posting on X, he said: \u201cVast majority of the British People do not want any part in the Israel-US war of choice on Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cIgnoring his own People, Mr Starmer is putting British lives in danger by allowing UK bases to be used for aggression against Iran. Iran will exercise its right to self-defence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US president, Donald Trump, said the UK \u201cshould have acted a lot faster\u201d in giving the US permission. He has already piled pressure on Nato allies, calling them \u201ccowards\u201d for refusing to offer warships to reopen the strait.<\/p>\n
The UK government had previously granted the US permission only for \u201cdefensive\u201d action.<\/p>\n
When that decision was made, RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was hit by an Iranian drone. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, described Sir Keir\u2019s latest move as the \u201cmother of all U-turns\u201d in a post on X.<\/p>\n
The Liberal Democrats and the Green party said granting further permission for the US to use British bases must first be put to a parliamentary vote.<\/p>\n
Starmer will hold a Cobra meeting next week to discuss plans to help households with the cost of living caused by the war, it is understood.<\/p>\n
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: \u201cIran\u2019s reckless attacks, lashing out across the region and holding hostage the strait of Hormuz, are a threat to British interests and British allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cRAF jets and other UK military assets are continuing to defend our people and personnel in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis government has given permission to the US to use British bases for specific and limited defensive operations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran has fired missiles towards a joint US-UK base on the island of Diego Garcia after warning that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-487602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487602","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=487602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}