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  "path": "/2026/03/the-war-on-iran-is-an-affront-to-democracy/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-16T12:34:46.000Z",
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  "textContent": "### Ministers are allowing US bombers to use British bases despite clear public opposition to the attacks on Iran. Parliament must vote before the government drags us deeper into this illegal war.\n\n* * *\n\nThe United States is using the RAF base as part of its military operations in Iran. (Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)\n\nBritain may not formally be at war with Iran. But decisions taken in recent weeks mean the country is edging ever closer to involvement in a spiralling conflict that Parliament has never authorised.\n\nThe government insists the UK is not supporting the military campaign launched by the United States and Israel. Ministers have instead relied on a carefully drawn distinction: the UK, they say, is not participating in offensive operations but is allowing American forces to use British bases for ‘defensive’ purposes.\n\nThat distinction demands serious scrutiny. Under such scrutiny, the lines between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ military action in Iran become dangerously blurred. During his statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister said the use of British bases would allow the United States to ‘take out the ability of Iran to launch the attacks in the first place’.\n\nFacilities including RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia have reportedly been made available for US operations connected to the conflict. Even if UK personnel are not directly carrying out the strikes, providing the infrastructure and operational space that makes such attacks possible raises serious political and legal questions about the UK’s role in the escalating conflict.\n\nThose questions are particularly urgent given the concerns many legal experts have raised about the campaign itself. The prohibition on the use of force in the United Nations Charter is clear: states cannot attack another country unless they are responding to an armed attack or acting in self-defence against an imminent threat. Without convincing evidence that those conditions have been met, the legality of the strikes on Iran is highly dubious at best.\n\nIf that is the case, the UK risks doing more than simply assisting an ally. It risks becoming entangled in a campaign that violates international law. That should alarm anyone who believes Britain must uphold the international rules-based order it claims to defend.\n\nAlready, that position is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. The world has seen the devastating consequences of Israel’s military strategy in the Middle East, with the UK government deeply complicit.\n\nIn Gaza, more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the region has been reduced to rubble. Israel’s conduct is widely accepted by international legal experts and scholars as genocide. Now humanitarian organisations are warning that elements of the same military playbook are being extended into Lebanon, where more than 700,000 people have been forcibly displaced in less than two weeks, and the suburbs of Beirut now resemble the same wreckage and rubble to which Gaza’s landscape has been reduced.\n\nWhether in Gaza, Lebanon or Iran, the pattern is one of escalating regional conflict with catastrophic ramifications for civilian life. Britain should not help facilitate that escalation. But the government’s current approach risks doing precisely that, while circumventing democratic scrutiny at home.\n\n# Parliament Must Decide\n\nUnder the UK’s constitutional system, ministers can authorise military action through the royal prerogative without first securing the approval of Parliament. Over the past two decades, however, a political convention has developed that holds MPs should debate and approve major military interventions. The current crisis shows why this convention matters.\n\nIf Britain is to be involved, directly or indirectly, in a conflict with Iran, MPs and the public deserve the opportunity to scrutinise that decision.\n\nThat is the purpose of my colleague Jeremy Corbyn’s Military Action (Parliamentary Approval) Bill, which would require parliamentary approval not only for the deployment of UK forces but also for granting foreign governments permission to use UK bases for armed conflict. It would ensure that decisions with the potential to drag Britain into war cannot be taken behind closed doors.\n\nRecent polling suggests that many people in Britain are — understandably — deeply sceptical about the worsening hostilities with Iran and oppose allowing US forces to launch strikes from UK bases. Yet ministers are making decisions that could draw the country into another war with no clear or achievable end objective and without either parliamentary consent or public backing.\n\nThe lessons from Iraq should be obvious. In 2003, millions marched through Britain’s streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. They warned that the war would unleash instability, deepen regional tensions and fuel the conflicts of the future. Those warnings were dismissed by those in power. The consequences are still unfolding today.\n\nIf the UK is to be drawn into the quagmire of another American-led Middle Eastern conflict, particularly one that raises such serious questions under international law, Parliament must have its say. And if ministers truly believe their actions are justified, they should have no hesitation in putting that case before the representatives of the British people.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "The War on Iran Is an Affront to Democracy",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-16T12:35:02.000Z"
}