US and Israeli strikes against Iran are not “legal in a way that the UK would recognise”, a former UK national security adviser has warned.
Explosions were heard over Tehran on Saturday morning after the coordinated “preventative attack”, which has prompted retaliatory strikes from Iran towards Israel.
President Donald Trump confirmed a “major combat operation” in an eight-minute speech posted to Truth Social, stating Iran could never have a nuclear weapon and adding: “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to take it any longer.”
But Lord Peter Ricketts, the UK’s former national security advisor, said the UK would not consider the attacks legal.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “None of this, I think, is in any sense legal in a way that the UK would recognise.
“There was really no imminent threat to the US. This is action that they chose to undertake, or were dragged into it by the Israelis.”
Lord Ricketts added that the Israeli government had “pre-empted any risk that the US-Iranian negotiations were going to reach some sort of deal on the nuclear programme”.
Meanwhile, a senior Labour MP has warned that the UK should resist being drawn into a conflict in the Middle East.
Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she did not think the US-Israeli strikes were legal.
She said: “As far as I’m aware, we’re not involved in this. There’s not been British agreement to be involved in this, and I think that’s the right thing to do. I don’t think that there’s a legal basis for this action.”
She added: “They were not under imminent threat, and so it’s therefore difficult to see what the legal justification is.”
Asked whether the UK should resist being drawn into the conflict, Dame Emily said: “Absolutely, unless we’re attacked ourselves, which, as I say, unfortunately this morning, we don’t know whether we will be because there may be attacks by the Iranians on Western bases in the Arab Gulf, and so then the situation may change.
“We just don’t know.”
This is a developing news story, more follows…
