Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) is refusing to tell the media or parliament how many Iranian civilians have been killed by US bombing missions from British air bases.
Officials are also not commenting on whether target lists for so-called “defensive” US strikes from British soil are approved by the UK before each mission, or if they are audited afterwards.
Further questions about whether the US uses artificial intelligence to compile these target lists, or whether it is allowed to load banned cluster bombs at UK bases, were rebuffed.
The silence casts serious doubt on Keir Starmer’s claim that Britain is not involved in the war and is only letting Donald Trump use British bases for a “specific, limited defensive purpose”.
The prime minister said US strikes from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and the British-occupied Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia were “to destroy [Iran’s] missiles at source, in their storage depots or at their launchers.”
When asked a series of simple questions about how Britain would monitor or enforce the target lists, the MoD and Attorney General’s Office refused to answer directly or make ministers available for an interview with Declassified.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We won’t be providing a running commentary on our allies’ operations, including their use of our bases.
“The United States has started using British bases for specific defensive operations to prevent Iran firing missiles into the region, which is putting British lives at risk.”
This new goal of preventing Iran “firing missiles into the region” seems much broader than what is permitted by the government’s own legal advice.
A summary of that position said the US should only use UK bases to “facilitate specific and limited defensive action against missile facilities in Iran which were involved in launching strikes at regional allies.”
It is unclear how the UK can distinguish between missile stockpiles which Iran may need to lawfully retaliate against the US and Israel’s illegal attack, and those weapons that might be fired at civilian sites in the Gulf.
Even in cases such as attacks on hotels in Bahrain, it has sometimes emerged that US troops were stationed inside.
Professor Marc Weller, a former UN legal advisor, has said “it may not be realistic or practical to determine in each instance which Iranian missile facilities have targeted regional allies or, more to the point, which will do so in the future. Presumably some have been used to attack both Israel and US forces, and regional states.
“Iran will certainly not be persuaded by this distinction. Its authorities will not be able to tell which US strikes launched from UK bases aim to protect UK regional allies, and which are part of the US’s overall aggressive campaign to subdue its government.”
Artificial intelligence
More than 1,300 civilians in Iran have been killed in US-Israeli strikes compared to at least 17 killed by Iranian strikes on the Gulf states.
UK defence minister Al Cairns refused on Tuesday to “publish a list of any civilian deaths that result from US military strikes that have used UK military bases” when asked by Labour MP Richard Burgon.
It comes as American B-1 and B-52 bombers have begun bombing Iran from RAF Fairford, despite 168 people being killed – most of them children – in a strike on a girls school in Iran earlier in the war.
Starmer refused to say if the school bombing was a war crime when asked in parliament on Wednesday.
The massacre at the school in Minab, southern Iran, has raised concern about the accuracy of US target lists, as the outdoor play area was visible on Google Earth since 2017.
A preliminary investigation by the Pentagon found the US may have used outdated intelligence, while others are concerned about the use of AI.
Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Centcom, said the US is “leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools” to bomb Iran, adding that “advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.”
The MoD refused to answer questions about whether target lists for US missions from UK bases would also use AI.
Cluster bombs
Government officials further refused to comment on whether US bombers based at RAF Fairford or Diego Garcia would be allowed to use cluster bombs.
Britain has signed an international treaty banning cluster munitions, whereas the US has not.
David Miliband, who was foreign secretary when the ban was passed, secretly allowed the US to keep cluster bombs at UK bases for “temporary exceptions” and on a “case-by-case” basis.
The exemption, revealed by WikiLeaks, came at a time when the US stockpiled cluster munitions in ships at Diego Garcia.
Current British officials have also refused to comment on whether the US can deploy graphite ‘blackout’ bombs, a type of cluster munition, from British bases.
The weapon, which was dropped on Yugoslavia and Iraq, is used to disable power stations and cripple a country’s electricity grid, which can lead to diseases like cholera.
Trump hinted at such an option on Thursday, threatening Iran: “We could take apart their electric capacity within one hour.”
Attorney General Lord Hermer, who made his career as a liberal human rights lawyer, declined to be interviewed on the potential use of these weapons, or about fighting in partnership with Israel, a country whose prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Intelligence sharing
As well as allowing the US to use British air bases to bomb Iran, there are also American intelligence personnel at sites in the UK and Cyprus that could be crucial to the conflict.
Starmer said on 5 March that “the US and the British [are] working together to protect both the US and the British in joint bases where we’re jointly located and we’re sharing intelligence on [a] 24/7 basis in the usual way”.
Members of parliament’s cross-party defence committee received a “secret briefing on operations in Iran and the wider region” from the MoD on Tuesday.
They released a cryptic statement saying “Although we cannot comment on the substance of that discussion…we note, however, the considerable gap between some of the political rhetoric circulating internationally, and the reality of the UK’s support to the United States and regional partners.”
This could be hinting at considerable US-UK intelligence cooperation during Trump’s illegal war.
America’s National Security Agency operates sites such as RAF Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, which campaigners have previously linked to Trump’s assasination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
The Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign said that last week “the base seems busier than usual with more vehicle movements through the gates”, suggesting this could be related to operations in Iran.