John Healey: ‘Few people will mourn the Ayatollah’s death’
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, after the US and Israel launched joint military attacks on Saturday. The conflict is ongoing, with Iran firing retaliatory strikes at multiple countries, and the outcome of President Donald Trump’s actions is highly unpredictable. In a statement, Keir Starmer made clear that the UK had ‘no role’ in the attacks, but said British planes were ‘in the sky’ to protect allies. On Sky News this morning, John Healey, the Defence Secretary, told Trevor Phillips that Khamenei and his regime were a ‘source of evil’ who had murdered thousands of protestors and exported terror around the world. Phillips noted the use of the word ‘evil’. Healey said the regime ‘menaces other countries’, and must ‘never be allowed to have a nuclear weapons programme’. As defence secretary, Healey said his job is to deal with the rising risks to British military and civilians in the region.
Priti Patel: Keir Starmer should have done more to help US/Israeli strikes
On the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg asked Priti Patel, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, if she welcomed the strikes against Iran. Patel said she did, because Iran is the ‘number one state sponsor of terror’, and it threatens the UK and its bases around the world. She said Starmer should have proactively assisted the US and Israel. Kuenssberg noted that reports suggested negotiations around Iran’s nuclear programme had been progressing well this week. Patel said we could not speculate on those negotiations, and claimed the US and Israel ‘must have felt… that they were under threat’. Kuenssberg asked Patel if it mattered to her if the US strikes were illegal under international law. Patel said any country facing an ‘imminent threat’ from a hostile state has the right to take military action, but argued that she supported the US strikes on a ‘moral basis’ even if they were illegal, because of the behaviour of Iran’s ‘brutal regime’.
Zack Polanski: ‘We’ve seen an illegal and unprovoked attack’
Laura Kuenssberg also asked Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, for his reaction to the news in Iran. Polanski called Khamenei as a ‘brutal, murderous dictator’, but labelled the US strikes ‘an illegal and unprovoked attack’. He criticised Healey for not condemning Trump’s actions, saying they represented ‘an end to international law’. Kuenssberg asked Polanski for his alternative plan. Polanski said he didn’t have an ‘easy answer’, but he argued that no country has ever been ‘bombed to democracy’. The Green leader claimed the only viable path is through de-escalation and negotiation. Kuenssberg asked what evidence there was to suggest that negotiations with Iran were working. Polanski said that when you rule out negotiation, ‘you’ve accepted that you’re going to war’.
John Healey: There’s a risk of ‘over interpreting’ the Gorton and Denton by-election
Labour suffered a huge loss in the Gorton and Denton by-election this week, plummeting from more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2024, to 25 per cent this time, in third place behind the winning Green Party and Reform UK. The result is another crisis for Starmer’s leadership. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips suggested to Healey that one factor in Labour’s loss had been their position on Gaza and the Middle East, and asked if their response to the Iran strikes would further increase hostility towards the party. Healey said he didn’t ‘read the results in that way’, and argued that the main concern of voters is the cost of living. He claimed there was ‘a risk of over interpreting a one off by-election result’, pointing out that the Conservatives had won the general election in 2015 despite losing ‘20 out of 21 by-elections’ after 2010. Healey said the government has three years to deliver ‘the sort of change that people voted for.’
Cameron Khansarinia: Iranians have greatest chance to return their country to ‘progress and prosperity’
Kuenssberg also interviewed Cameron Khansarinia, who is Chief of Staff to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Iranian Shah. Khansarinia said that the Iranian people have ‘the greatest opportunity in the past 47 years to reclaim their country’ from a regime that is ‘crumbling’, and thanked Trump for his leadership. Kuenssberg noted that some people are suspicious about the possible return of a monarchy to Iran, and asked if Khansarinia could reassure Iranians that Pahlavi would seek a democracy. Khansarinia argued that the UK demonstrates there is no contradiction between a monarchy and a democracy, and said Pahlavi is offering a ‘process to democracy’, during which the Iranian people would be able to choose between a constitutional monarchy or a republic.
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