The Spectator

Ignoring Iran

issue 29 June 2019

Crises in the Gulf and Conservative leadership elections come around with unnerving regularity. It is not unknown for both to coincide — that happened in 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was overthrown in the lead-up to the first Gulf War. On that occasion, drama on the domestic front did not smother Britain’s response to the international crisis — unlike now.

It is bizarre to have a US president threatening to ‘obliterate’ Iran while our Foreign Secretary hardly bothers to respond, preferring to pose with fish and chips and Irn Bru on the campaign trail.

Jeremy Hunt did intervene briefly a fortnight ago, when he described Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to accept that Iran was responsible for attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz as ‘pathetic’. But beyond that brief clash of the Jeremys, it is hard to detect that there is any government policy on the current skirmish between the US and Iran.

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