Watching British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announce that Britain is joining U.S. military operations against Iran was like listening to a broadcast from the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.

Speaking from Downing Street with Union Jack flags behind his shoulders, Starmer affected a somber, reassuring tone, saying that Britain was permitting the United States to use British military bases for “defensive strikes” to prevent Iran from “firing missiles across the region, killing innocent civilians.”

The British leader’s ability for double-think is impressive. Even after making the announcement, he assured the public that Britain’s involvement is not “offensive”. This is while the U.S. uses British bases in England, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to mount bombing raids on Iran, which have so far killed nearly 800 civilians in only a matter of days. Civilian deaths from Iranian strikes across the region – so far, fewer than 20 – are a tiny fraction of that figure.

For several weeks, the United States had been flying squadrons of fighter jets and refueling tankers to Britain on their way to the Middle East for what has now turned out to be a major war with Iran. Starmer previously maintained the double-think that Britain wasn’t going to let its bases be used by Trump for any eventual war. The British premier said that this reluctance was based on “lessons learnt” from the Iraq War in 2003 when his predecessor Tony Blair had backed the George W Bush administration in launching a disastrous decade-long conflict that resulted in over one million deaths, millions of displaced, and regionwide terrorism that continues to haunt multiple nations.

Britain has learnt nothing from history. Today, it is repeating the same reckless rush to war in the Middle East in the service of American imperialism. Only this time, a war with Iran could be on an even greater disastrous scale than in Iraq. And Starmer is projecting the risible fiction that Britain is not involved because, he claims, what it is doing is “defensive”. This is Orwell meets Alice in Wonderland.

Starmer, like the rest of the European leaders, is throwing fuel onto a potential conflagration in the Middle East. They are fueling Washington and Israel’s impunity to commit even crimes by not calling out the aggressor. Instead, the British and the Europeans are pathetically appeasing the aggressor and blaming the victims, Iran.

No wonder Donald Trump has such contempt for these vassals because they have no backbone or independence. This week, Trump told British media that Starmer was an inferior ally, even after the prime minister did a U-turn in favor.

When the Americans and the Israelis started bombing Iran on February 28, it was in the midst of diplomatic negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegates. Omani mediators were saying on February 27 that progress was being made on talks about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. But the decision to bomb Iran was taken weeks ago by Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The talks were just a pretext to give time for cranking up the war machine, with Britain’s help, of course.

Just like the attacks last June on Iran during previous negotiations, Washington and Israel opted for unilateral military action. That is aggression, a blatant violation of international law. Trump and Netanyahu’s claims about Iran building a nuclear weapon and their taking defensive action are cynical lies. Are we to believe people who are carrying out genocide in Gaza?

On the first morning of the latest round of aggression, Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed in air strikes on his home in Tehran. Scores of other Iranian senior figures were also murdered in separate attacks. Trump boasted about “decapitation”.

That same morning, U.S. and Israeli air strikes hit an elementary school in Minab in southern Iran, killing 165 schoolgirls.

Yet none of the European leaders, including Starmer, condemned this mass murder and aggression. They saved their hypocritical words to censure Iran after it retaliated with its own strikes on U.S. interests across the Persian Gulf and on Israel. Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been hit with waves of Iranian drones and missiles.

Like Britain, the Gulf monarchies are not innocent bystanders. They have provided the U.S. war machine with crucial bases and logistics to mount the aggression on Iran.

Britain’s Starmer tries to feign innocence that his country and the Gulf states are somehow “not involved”. This is an insult to common intelligence.

Britain and the Gulf monarchs are up to their necks in complicity with the U.S. and Israeli aggression against Iran. They will reap the whirlwind for the crimes they have sown.

Trump and his administration have foolishly walked over the abyss, and they are dragging their vassals with them. Trump’s stupidity and lies are so outrageous that they beg questions about his sanity.

Iran has reluctantly gone to war out of self-defense. But it is clear that once committed, Iran is prepared for a long war. It has taken out much of the supply and logistical bases in the Gulf that the U.S. needs to maintain its armada of warships and aircraft. It is believed that when the U.S. and Israel are depleted of their million-dollar missiles and not very effective air-defense systems, the Iranians will move to the next phase of firing their modern and powerful anti-ship ballistic missiles.

over, the impact on the global economy from shutting down the Persian Gulf is going to be even consequential and devastating for the fragile American and European economies.

Iran warned the United States for years not to go to war. But the arrogant Americans and their allies did not listen. They were so full of their own propaganda, illusions, and ignorance of history.

That’s why Trump, Rubio, Netanyahu, Starmer, and other European politicians are speaking with such incomprehensible doublespeak and double-think, and why they are walking into catastrophe.

These arrogant people learn nothing from history, and they are doomed to repeat it. Tragically, and criminally, a lot of innocent people will suffer because of these psychopathic clowns and liars who slavishly serve a capitalist system driven by war.

Part of the problem, too, is that the Western media have for years indulged in the propaganda lies that afforded impunity to criminals in office who keep repeating their crimes.

However, the whole Western warmongering system is about to crash against a wall of objective reality. Orwellian deceit and distortion of history can postpone reality… until the absurdity and contradictions become unbearable.

Finian Cunningham is coauthor of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation