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Dragon bait
Shoreside farewells and a plucky tug boat carving the waves saw the British destroyer HMS Dragon off to a theatre of conflict centred on Iran on Tuesday.
It is a move that could allay concerns that the UK military has run out of puff.
We reported a few weeks ago that the last British naval ship active in the Gulf was a departing minesweeper. So when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, there was a UK naval base but no ships. That base quickly came under assault from Iran, as did the whole length of the Arabian Gulf shoreline as Tehran sought to close the strategic waterway.
Dragon is sailing to Cyprus where a sovereign air base has also been attacked by Iran's proxies. Europe has already rallied to the island's defence – Cyprus is in the EU but not in Nato.
French President Emmanuel Macron has visited but only the UK Defence Minister John Healey has travelled from the UK. Politically, the French response – an aircraft carrier, two helicopter landing ships and eight frigates – amounts to a modern-day armada.
This has played well for Mr Macron, with a bounce in the polls. Keir Starmer and Britain are under a cloud for not taking up the UK's historic role at the front of the region's military history.
The contrast with Mr Macron's ability to order his own flotilla of navy ships, travel to Cyprus to inspect its defences and promise to send vessels to the Red Sea for freedom of shipping is telling. Mr Macron has even suggested French warships would provide Strait of Hormuz escorts for tankers, although only when the Iranian aggression had quietened.
Mr Starmer's pronouncements have been domestically focused. He told the cabinet on Tuesday that no matter what challenges the war throws up, the government will remain focused on problems with the cost of living. He said that supporting families will always be at the forefront of his mind.
Explaining how London sees the crisis means looking at how the government's foreign policy priorities set down before the war became a reality. To address its defence gaps, it has promised a Nato-first force orientation. Mr Starmer's foreign policy priority is a UK-EU reset and there are signs that is why the government did not rally as the US set itself on a course to war.
Meanwhile, the government must also show it is attending to the needs of the 300,000 Britons who are suffering bombardment alongside fellow residents and visitors to the Gulf.
A second UK government flight for British citizens seeking to return home left Dubai last night.
Thirty-two commercial flights from the Gulf landed in the UK yesterday – the most in a single day since March 1. The government estimates more than 45,000 British citizens have left the region in that time.
The figures show a sustained fall in UK nationals registering and calls to the helpline are also coming down.
Floating cargoes
The UK has only two days’ worth of gas storage. It pursues a "just-in-time" policy, under which 75 per cent of the country’s needs come from its own fields in the North Sea and through a pipeline from Norway. The rest is imported liquefied natural gas delivered by tanker and from storage tanks in Europe.
The Iran war has led to a surge in oil and gas prices. The UK policy of retiring North Sea reserves has been exposed by the crisis, as it was with the Ukraine war.
Enrique Cornejo, director of policy at Offshore Energies UK, is damning. "To prevent a repeat of this situation, the UK needs to take a more pragmatic approach to energy security," he said. "That means maintaining and investing in domestic oil and gas production during the transition, alongside accelerating renewables and low‑carbon technologies."
Buried danger
On our front page today we carry the words of the UN's nuclear watchdog setting out what's at stake with America and Israel's original issue with Iran – highly enriched uranium. Almost half of Iran's uranium enriched to up to 60 per cent purity – a short step from weapons-grade – was stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and is probably still there, the body's chief Rafael Grossi has said.
The tunnel complex is the only target that appears not to have been badly damaged in attacks last June by Israel and the US on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Isfahan has been used to store substantial amounts of uranium enriched to 60 per cent. More than 200kg of the 440.9kg of 60 per cent uranium were kept by Iran at nuclear plants nationwide before the 12-day war.
New rules
Britain has adopted a new definition of anti-Muslim hostility as part of a broader strategy to tackle rising hate crime, it has been announced.
The UK charity regulator will also receive new powers to address extremism and the promotion of hatred.
Announcing the change in parliament, Communities Secretary Steve Reed said the government was adopting a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility.
It describes anti-Muslim hostility as “intentionally engaging in, assisting or encouraging criminal acts … that are directed at Muslims because of their religion”.
It is also the “prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims … with the intention of encouraging hatred against them”.
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