Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has insisted that Britain will not base its foreign policy decisions on what the United States does or says, amid ongoing US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Speaking during a busy period that included firing Peter Mandelson and meeting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Cooper said: 'Making decisions based on what the US do or say doesn’t feel like sensible foreign policy.'
The joint US-Israeli bombardment of Iran is ongoing, with oil facilities and desalination plants ablaze in Iran and Gulf states. More than 1,800 people have been killed across the region, including 175 schoolgirls and staff in Minab, south Iran, which a New York Times investigation suggests was a US precision strike. Cooper has been fielding calls from 'shocked and angry' Gulf allies, including Oman, which had been mediating negotiations with Iran before the US aborted peace talks.
Donald Trump has criticised Prime Minister Keir Starmer for refusing to allow US troops to use British bases to launch initial strikes, saying the UK need not send aircraft carriers to a war 'we’ve already won'. Trump added: 'This is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with.' Cooper and Starmer have spoken for the first time since the war began.
Cooper's recent diplomatic efforts have included a trip to Washington DC to meet Rubio, where the two broke away from a scheduled roundtable for a private chat that overran by an hour. Until the strikes, the pair had an 'excellent' working relationship, communicating almost daily on the messaging app Signal. Cooper also had an 'unscheduled bilat' with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar after her UN security council statement on Gaza and the West Bank, where she spoke forcefully about humanitarian catastrophe and the need for a viable Palestinian state.
Cooper has stressed her focus on the civil war in Sudan, describing it as 'the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century'. She also travelled overland into Ukraine to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war.
