Middle East

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will resist setting out the full international law test, but it is clear what the test is—I think that is not disputed. As far as I know, nobody is challenging the Attorney General’s advice, the summary of which has been published for all to see; I do not think anybody is saying that that is the wrong advice. [Interruption.] I will look at the shadow Attorney General’s advice. I would be surprised if he advises that it would have been unequivocally lawful to have joined the initial action, but if the Leader of the Opposition will give me that advice, I will carefully consider it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

May I take the Prime Minister back to his earlier position? I do not think his own MPs quite realise what he has said. He said that his reason originally for not allowing RAF Fairford, for example—or even Diego Garcia—to be used was that it would constitute, for him, a breach of international law, because it would mean that we were condoning an offensive operation. However, he has changed his position because of attacks on allies and on a UK base. That means that he is authorising the Americans to act in defence by taking out those kinds of missiles that would attack us. Surely that means that the UK armed forces—in this case, the Royal Air Force—could now be used by the Government in no breach of international law in a defensive action to take out those missiles as well.

[The Prime Minister]

There are two separate considerations, obviously; the first was the decision on whether to join the US and Israel in the first place, and the second was the decision that we took last night. We started taking defensive action on Saturday by deploying our pilots to the skies in the region, so we had already taken that action. We added to that defensive action last night by permitting the US to use our bases to strike at the capability of Iran to issue the strikes in the first place.