The leader of the Green Party has condemned strikes on Iran by Israel and the US, calling them “illegal and unprovoked”. Zack Polanski said it is “astounding” that Keir Starmer is “incapable” of standing up to Donald Trump.
Saturday morning, strikes began in Tehran in an attempt to change the regime, with the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, calling for an uprising on X (formerly Twitter). The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a strike on his compound. Trump announced this on social media without evidence, with state media later confirming it.
Preliminary figures are that 201 are dead and 747 have been injured, including 153 killed in a strike on a school. Trump said in an address that the strikes were to defend the US from “imminent threats” from Iran, calling them “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people”. He claimed Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons and missile systems that could reach the US. While on BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Polanski said he is “worried” that, if Starmer cannot stand up to Trump, the UK could be pulled into another illegal war like the Iraq War in 2003.
“We’ve seen what I would say is an illegal and unprovoked attack,” Polanski said. “We’ve got a Defence Secretary saying that diplomacy is the long runway we need but won’t condemn Donald Trump when he attacks a country and assassinates its leader.
“That’s the law of the jungle. That’s an end to international law. It’s quite astounding that we have a Prime Minister that seems singularly incapable of standing up to Donald Trump and letting the UK stand on its own two feet, and I’m worried the UK is going to be pulled into another illegal war.”
The UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, repeatedly refused to say if the US and Israel’s strikes against Iran were legal, saying: “It’s for the US to explain the legal basis they’re operating on.”
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The leader of the Green Party said he has seen “no evidence” that the UK took diplomacy and negotiation with Iran seriously. He said: “The moment you’ve ruled out negotiation, you’ve accepted that you’re going to war, and I don’t think the British people want to see another war in that region.”
“The question becomes: how do you make diplomacy and negotiation work? What I know is negotiation was happening, whether it was working or not is a legitimate question, but I don’t think the answer can be, it’s not working, so we’re going to bomb and kill them, the answer has to be: how do we work harder to make it work, including third countries to use to de-escalate?
“I’ve seen no evidence that the UK was really taking that process seriously, because part of the start of that would be to call out Donald Trump and Israel. There is only one region in that area with a nuclear weapon, and that’s Israel.”