Middle East

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for the security briefing I received earlier.

This is a defining moment for the people of Iran, the wider middle east and the world order. I know that hundreds of thousands of British people still in the region, many sheltering from drone attacks, are fearful about making it home. I agree with the Prime Minister that everyone in the region should follow FCDO advice and register their presence with a British embassy. Can the Prime Minister confirm whether he is making contingency plans for a potential evacuation of UK citizens and what stage the operational planning is at?

Let me also pay tribute to our brave service personnel stationed in British bases in the region. I know that this will be an anxious time for them and their families. They all have our support.

We stand in solidarity with our allies, including Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who, along with others, have been on the receiving end of unprovoked aggression. On Saturday, our allies the United States and Israel took targeted action against the Iranian regime, a regime which for decades has been brutally repressing its own citizens, whose leader had the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iranians on his hands and of countless others around the world killed by Iranian proxies. This regime is the world’s foremost sponsor of international terrorism. It seeks to annihilate the world’s only Jewish state. It has said so repeatedly, and we should take despots at their word. It is a regime whose apparatchiks chant, “Death to Britain”. It has attacked British nationals and conducted multiple plots on British soil, as the head of MI5 has warned. It is manufacturing drones en masse for Russia—drones which are raining down on innocent Ukrainians. And it continues to try to develop nuclear weapons in flagrant violation of international agreement—nuclear weapons which, if obtained, would be an existential threat for this country.

The outcome of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death will, we hope, be a safer middle east and a safer world, with the future of Iran back in the hands of the Iranian people, but that outcome is not yet guaranteed. On Saturday, our allies in Canada and Australia immediately backed the action taken by America against this despotic regime in Tehran. I have made it very clear that the Conservative party also stands behind America taking this necessary action against state-sponsored terror. But over the weekend, statements from the Government and the Prime Minister provided no such clarity. It was only last night that the Prime Minister finally told us that the Government would allow our allies the use of our own air bases. Despite it being obvious that UK interests were under imminent threat, it took Iranian missiles hitting allies in the Gulf before he finally made a decision. And even after that, the Foreign Secretary said this morning that the Government have put limits on the actions of our allies operating from our bases. Unbelievably, in his statement today, the Prime Minister still cannot say whether he backs the strikes or not.

Today, the President of the United States has taken the extraordinary step of rebuking the Prime Minister publicly, saying that he “took far too long” to grant access. We are told that this dither and delay is because of concerns over international law, but I am afraid that that explanation simply does not hold. International law did not prevent our allies from clearly and unequivocally stating whose side they were on—you do not need international law to say whose side you are on. It has not prevented British Governments in the past from supporting strikes that we knew to be right. The shadow Attorney General said:

“If the doctrines of international law prove unable to restrain Iranian terrorism and mass murder, and tie the hands of democracies”

while forcing us

“to stand and watch Iranian atrocities, international law will have failed. It will have become a fundamentally immoral system of law”.

Why is it that under this Prime Minister, international law always seems to be at odds with our national interest? Why is it that we are giving away the Chagos islands and paying £35 billion for the privilege, rather than standing up for our national interest and protecting a crucial military base that, even now, our allies are using? We in this House are elected to stand up for Britain’s national interest. Where the Government do the right thing, the Opposition will always back them. Let me therefore reiterate our offer: if the Government bring forward legislation to fast-track banning the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, we will support them.

What national interest was served by refusing to help our allies for so long, particularly when we so need American support to protect the security of Ukraine and Europe? Are we going to see new UK military capabilities deployed to protect our security partners and our bases, including in Cyprus, as well as British nationals in the region? Will the Prime Minister also ensure that the Chancellor uses the spring statement tomorrow to set Britain on a clear path to spending 3% of GDP on defence? There is no point wanting action to make the world a safer place while being too scared to do anything except stand by and watch others. Our national interest and national security must be front and centre. The Conservative party will always work with our allies to make the world a safer place.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady asks about contingency plans for UK nationals. I can assure her and the House that we are working at speed with our partners in the region to take whatever measures we can to ensure that our people can return as safely and as swiftly as possible, and we will continue to do so. I am happy to update her and the House as we roll out those plans.

Let me be very clear: there were two distinct and separate decisions over the weekend. The first decision was whether the United Kingdom should join the US-Israel offensive against Iran. We took the decision that we should not. The second decision—a separate decision and, actually, a separate request from the US—was whether we should permit the use of bases for the distinct, specific defensive purpose of collective self-defence of our allies and to protect British lives that were put at risk by the actions of Iran on Saturday and Sunday. We took the decision that we should do so.

I am clear in my mind that any UK action must always have a lawful basis. It must also always have a viable and thought-through plan, and it must be in our national interests. The Leader of the Opposition is, I think, saying that she would have joined the initial strikes whether they were lawful or not. I notice that she did not say that the shadow Attorney General said that they would have been lawful, just that the law should be changed. I think she said that the Opposition would have joined the initial strikes without regard to whether they had a plan. She was very critical of us not joining sooner—it is impossible to have that position without arguing that we could and should have joined.

I fundamentally disagree, and I will tell the House why. Where our military personnel take action, putting their lives at risk, it is our duty—my duty—to ensure that the actions have a lawful basis. On Saturday, we deployed UK pilots into the sky in the region, and they have been working there ever since. They deserve to know that their actions are lawful and that there is a viable, thought-through plan. I will not countenance committing our military personnel to action that does not have a lawful basis. That is not a fair thing to do to our serving personnel. No UK Prime Minister has ever committed our personnel to action unless it has a proper, lawful basis.