Israel-Iran war: Sometimes the best thing for the British government to do in a crisis is to stay out of it - Andy Brown

During the Vietnam war the aim of the West was to establish democracy and prevent the spread of communism. The outcome was 58,000 dead Americans and somewhere between one and two million dead Vietnamese.

Whilst the war was in progress, the North Vietnamese government established itself more solidly in power and eventually took over the whole country. After peace broke out the country gradually improved and even started to see some greater degrees of economic and social freedom. Vietnam today is nothing like a fair and free democracy, but it is also not a dangerous hellhole. Peace seems to have achieved more progress than the war ever did.

The UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson wisely kept Britain out of that war. Not many people regret his decision.

When the second Iraq war broke out it seemed initially that Britain had participated in a hugely successful military operation which quickly swept across the country and caused the downfall of an evil regime. Unfortunately winning the ground war is a lot simpler than sorting out what follows. Instead of turning Iraq into a beacon of stability there was utter chaos, a lot more killing and little sign of high quality democratic government presiding over a free and fair society. We may have won the war, but most historians think we lost the peace.

When the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, went on television and told us all war was necessary in order to stop Iraq acquiring weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, he got widespread support from the media and from across Parliament. Looking back on that war it is hard to argue that the outcome fully justified Britain’s active involvement in breaking international law by participating in an invasion of another country.

When British aircraft bombed Libya, it seemed to many a thoroughly justified action that had the aim of supporting ordinary Libyan citizens who were trying to rise up against an oppressive government and being shot down. It seemed easy to remove the dictator who was the cause of the trouble and that the country would then have a better future under a stable democracy.

What has actually taken place has been over a decade of violent disorder and a country ruled by a set of armed gangs where the average citizen seems to have even less freedom to live their lives as they choose than they did before we decided to contribute to the killing.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron gave the order for British troops to attack Libya with the support of the vast majority of members of Parliament from all sides of the House. Quite a lot of people now regret that decision.

So it might be sensible right now for politicians to take a deep breath and think hard and long before they involve Britain in any way in what is taking place in the Middle East. The main justification for taking any action seems to be that Britain needs to help Israel to defend itself against a government run by dangerous religious fanatics who wish to acquire nuclear weapons and have little respect for human life.

Under that logic we need to be very careful about supporting Benjamin Netanyahu because his government includes some very extreme religious fanatics and already possesses nuclear weapons. At the moment hunger is being inflicted on an entire community and desperate people are then being shot in bread queues. Almost the whole of Gaza has been systematically flattened and hospitals destroyed. Land is being stolen in the West Bank. Is that something Britain wants to be seen to support?

All decent people felt a wave of sympathy for the people killed and taken hostage by Hamas in October 2023. Increasingly few people in Britain are comfortable to have our country line up behind a government which has exceeded any reasonable definition of carefully targeted measured retaliation.

Before we start taking any action to control who has possession of nuclear weapons, we need to ask a lot of hard questions about whether we feel Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible enough to be in control of them. At the moment Britain is supplying military intelligence to the Israeli government some of which has been used to select targets not just in Iran but also in Gaza. We are continuing to sell them weapons. Yet two of the members of that government have been found to be so guilty of involvement in encouraging war crimes that the British government has sanctioned them.

Sometimes the best thing for the British government to do in a crisis is to stay out of it. We don’t have to take either side in a conflict between two morally questionable governments.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.