Originally published in the Jewish Weekly on June 19, 2025.
By Steve Winston, Managing Director, National Jewish Assembly
As air raid sirens echoed across Tel Aviv and Iranian nuclear facilities erupted in fire and smoke, Israel made one of the most consequential military decisions of our time. It struck at the core of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme and the leadership of the IRGC, asserting a right long denied by Western diplomats cowering behind outdated treaties and UN resolutions. And what was the UK’s contribution to this moment of civilisational clarity? A trembling statement from Sir Keir Starmer urging “both sides” to “de-escalate”.
This is not just disappointing. It is cowardice draped in the language of neutrality.
Let us not mince words: Israel’s strike was not an act of belligerence, but an act of necessity. For decades, Iran has built an empire of terror from the embers of the Islamic Revolution. It has trained and armed Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and countless Shia militias across Iraq and Syria. It has executed dissidents, hanged gay men in public squares, and imprisoned women for daring to show their hair. All while marching steadily toward a nuclear weapon and threatening to use it against the one Jewish state in the world.
Iran’s ambitions were never a secret. The chant “Death to Israel” is not a metaphor in the Islamic Republic – it is policy. And yet, successive British governments, obsessed with legacy diplomacy and naïve engagement, remained willfully blind. The JCPOA – Barack Obama’s grand diplomatic folly, enthusiastically endorsed by the UK – infused the regime with billions in sanctions relief, funding terror from Gaza to Yemen. In return, Iran gave the world nothing but delay tactics and centrifuges.
And now, faced with the reality of Israeli self-defence, Britain has the audacity to equivocate. Starmer’s lukewarm call for “de-escalation” from both parties betrays either a moral vacuum or a catastrophic misunderstanding of the threat at hand. This is not a schoolyard spat. This is a prelude to a possible regional war – and only one side has openly pledged genocide.
The Israeli government, quite rightly, did not bother to inform the UK of its plans. After years of being patronised, pressured, and even sanctioned by Western allies for defending itself, Israel has little reason to trust the judgment of European governments who cannot keep their own cities safe from radicalisation, let alone understand the existential stakes of the Middle East.
Indeed, that is perhaps the most galling aspect of Britain’s posture. The UK has suffered firsthand from Iranian-linked terror plots. MI5 has confirmed multiple assassination attempts on British soil by Iranian proxies. Iran remains the largest state sponsor of terrorism globally. Yet our government responds to Israel’s disruption of that threat not with gratitude, but with hand-wringing statements crafted to placate an increasingly radicalised domestic audience.
Britain once stood as the cornerstone of Western resolve. Today, it barely manages to avoid being trampled by the tides of ideology and indecision. While Israel endures rocket fire from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, the UK’s jets sit in the region, “preparing for contingencies.” What contingencies? Is the Royal Air Force there to defend British troops and assets only if attacked, while Israel fends for itself against theocratic tyranny?
One wonders if Starmer, in his desperation to appear statesmanlike, understands the difference between leadership and evasion. “Both sides must de-escalate,” he says. That phrase will go down in history alongside other great failures of moral courage – uttered not to bring peace, but to dodge responsibility.
If Iran succeeds in acquiring a nuclear weapon, it will not merely threaten Israel. It will irrevocably alter the global balance of power, placing every Western capital within range of extortion, proxy warfare, or worse. The comparison to the Russia-Ukraine dynamic is apt: if Ukraine had kept its Soviet-era nukes, would Putin have invaded? If Iran obtains the bomb, what deterrence will be left for the West?
The UK must rediscover its backbone. It must stand with its democratic allies – not merely in word, but in deed. And it must understand that sometimes, the only way to prevent war is to win it before the enemy can launch it.
