by Rob Marchant
First, let’s get one thing clear. Those who, in the last couple of weeks, have crowed that Starmer is a bureaucrat standing on ceremony, he is weak, he has broken the Special Relationship, or a hundred other criticisms on Iran, could do with a bit of calm reflection.
The Special Relationship, such as it ever was, was broken when Trump made loud plans to annex part of another NATO state and insultingly pretended that our troops had been gun-shy in joint theatres of war. It was certainly broken when he made it abundantly clear at Munich, that Europe needed to plough its own furrow when it came to mutual defence, indeed, that Europe was the enemy, not an ally.
The US has plunged itself, and the world, into an economically-destabilising conflict in Iran, apparently with very little anticipation of impacts. While we can all be delighted with the decapitation strategy and the just desserts meted out to evil men, if a decent endgame is not identified sharpish, it will have been an entirely Pyrrhic victory”.
If the Allies were poorly-prepared for the aftermath of Iraq, then this is a hundred times worse. There appears to be no plan for more than a few days ahead: financial markets go crazy; insurers and suppliers claim force majeure; all the while, thousands of expats are stranded in danger-zones in the Middle East.
Worst of all, one suspects that, even though a key ally is disabled, on balance, Vladimir Putin is secretly delighted at the chaos being created in the West. Especially now oil sanctions on his klepto-state have at least partially been lifted. This alone is enough to indicate the level of bad which is likely to follow.
