UK greenlights renewed US strikes on Iran from British soil

Hamish Falconer told MPs that UK permissions for US use of British air bases “remain in place,” even as Trump unilaterally declared the ceasefire “over” and resumed airstrikes against Iranian targets.

UK play’s Trump’s poodle

Falconer, the Labour MP for the Middle East, said in Parliament:

In relation to the question about military support, I want to be clear: the UK stands with our Gulf allies in a defensive capacity. As the shadow Foreign Secretary alluded to, we do provide capability to our friends and partners in the Gulf to protect themselves against these attacks. We do also continue to provide permissions to the United States to use our airbases, where they are taking defensive action on behalf of our partners and allies. Those arrangements have been discussed by the relevant Ministers from the Ministry of Defence on a number of occasions, and they remain in place.

He was responding to Labour backbencher Apsana Begum, who pressed Falconer on the extent of British military involvement, asking whether the UK is conducting case-by-case authorisation for each US strike. He avoided a direct answer to that. 

Falconer is a pro at avoidance, see story below:

Falconer’s cheap platitudes on abducted Gazan doctor Abu Safiya have sparked public backlash over Britain’s complicity in Israeli war crimes, and his brazen attacks on critics.https://t.co/XGP9UZf3jP

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) July 6, 2026

Multilateral maritime mission

Falconer’s colleague, Yvette Cooper meanwhile, has also been boasting about UK’s role in this war of choice on Iran.

Yvette Cooper also confirmed to MPs in Parliament that the UK and France stand ready to deploy the wider Multinational Military Mission to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Cooper said the UK strongly condemns Iran’s recent attacks on commercial ships, including those from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. She said no country has the right to hijack international shipping.

She said:

We stand in solidarity with our partners across the region. Iran must halt these attacks on international shipping, support the reopening of the strait and return to de-escalation and diplomacy.

The UK stands ready to support a return to talks, because Iran must never be able to develop a nuclear weapon and we need the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. That is why, alongside France, the UK has established a multilateral maritime mission to support  the de-mining of the strait, verification and reassurance to shipping, and ultimately to support the global economy, and ease the cost of living back home.

UK lectures Iran while ignoring its own imperial history

Cooper says no country has the right to hold the global economy hostage.

But as Ferdinand Mount notes in the London Review of Books, Britain spent the 19th century doing exactly that, its admirals “steaming into faraway rivers to bombard inoffensive foreign capitals” with impunity.

Mount describes how British admirals acted with impunity, burning Washington in 1814, bombarding Canton (now Guangzhou) and Peking (now Beijing) in the Opium Wars, and bombarding Alexandria in 1882, all while claiming the moral high ground.

Cooper needs a history lesson, doesn’t she.

Featured image via the Canary