The foreign secretary has condemned Iran’s strikes on a joint US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia, while stressing the UK has “taken a different position from the US and Israel” on the conflict.
Yvette Cooper said ministers wanted to see a swift resolution to the war, adding the government was supporting defensive action against the “reckless Iranian threats”. Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the Chagos island but neither hit, the Iranian news agency Mehr reported. One of the missiles was shot down by a US warship, while the other failed in flight, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Cooper told broadcasters on Saturday: “We have continued to support defensive action to support UK interests, including defensive action against ballistic missile threats. But we want to see as swift as possible a resolution to this conflict.” The Ministry of Defence described the attacks as “reckless” and said US use of British bases was “limited and defensive”.
Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Islands, is about 3,800km from Iran and home to an airbase capable of accommodating long-range US bombers. Ministers gave the US permission to strike Iranian missile sites targeting the strait of Hormuz from UK bases including Diego Garcia on Friday afternoon.
Iran reacted angrily, with its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claiming it would “exercise its right to self-defence”. The US president, Donald Trump, said the UK “should have acted a lot faster” in giving the US permission. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, described the prime minister’s latest move as the “mother of all U-turns”.
