Britain’s long history of adversarial policies toward Iran and Israel - opinion

The decision by Britain’s Labour government to impose new sanctions on Israel, just as the Islamic Republic’s regional Axis of Evil has been heavily degraded, its top leadership eliminated, and its proxy networks shattered, is not a routine diplomatic shift. It is the continuation of a long-standing, calculated historical pattern.

London is no longer operating behind the curtain, signaling to Islamists that they still have a major power patron, while stepping openly into the role of a major opponent of Israel just as Iran’s proxy network faces unprecedented destruction.

While the UK sanctions Israel over the construction of 1,200 residential units east of Jerusalem, it took zero practical action against the Islamic Republic’s massacre of over 50,000 Iranians on January 8-9, 2026. To make matters worse, British Foreign Office officials even attended a celebratory event at the regime’s embassy.

Iran and the Jewish people share a unique biblical and historical bond in the region, yet Britain has a long record of positioning itself against both Iranian sovereignty and Jewish sovereignty.

The UK was the mastermind behind the occupation of Iran in August 1941. They exiled Reza Shah Pahlavi out of a personal vendetta against him for reclaiming Khuzestan, a province of Iran that the UK intended to turn into an independent state, similar to the Persian Gulf nations.

The UK and its propaganda enterprise, the BBC, were among the main puppet masters of the 1979 catastrophe and the rise of the Islamists to power in Iran. This is the very same BBC that has now become the “anti-Israel-in-chief” media, effectively serving as Hamas’s media outlet during the war following the October 7 atrocities.

Today’s British policies reflect the very hostility Herzl anticipated.

The United Kingdom officially labels Israeli sovereignty over its historic heartland, Judea and Samaria, an “occupation,” popularizing the artificial term “West Bank.”

The historical roots of this bias took shape during the British Mandate for Palestine. Britain suspended the Mandate’s provisions establishing a “Jewish National Home” east of the Jordan River, using its administrative powers to reserve this vast territory for Arab settlement and prohibit Jewish immigration and land purchases.

The creation of the Kingdom of Jordan across roughly 77% of the original Palestine Mandate was an intentional strategic move. It ensured that when the land was partitioned between Jews and Arabs, the Jewish people received the smallest fraction possible.

This 1922 carving meant that by the 1947 UN Partition Plan, only the remaining 23% of the western territory, comprising modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, was left as the baseline for division.

This institutional shielding of extremist antisemitic forces became glaringly evident in the aftermath of World War II.

Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who actively collaborated with Adolf Hitler and helped build the Muslim Nazi SS “Handschar” division to perpetrate atrocities against Jews and Serbs, was formally indicted as a war criminal by Yugoslavia.

Yet, British authorities consciously intervened, effectively allowing the mufti to evade trial and escape safely to Egypt, prioritizing imperial leverage over justice for Jewish victims.

This cynical shielding paved the way for the next phase of containment: the explicit attempt to suffocate the State of Israel in its infancy during the 1948 War of Independence, an operation designed and executed entirely by a Labour government.

Under former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee and foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, London actively sought to crush the nascent Jewish state.

In the war’s opening days, the invading Arab armies held a distinct tactical advantage, particularly Jordan’s Arab Legion, directly trained, financed, and commanded by British officers such as John Bagot Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha.

To lock in these early Arab gains and deny Israeli forces time to mobilize or buy weapons, Britain drafted and aggressively pushed UN Security Council Resolution 50.

The resolution imposed an arms embargo and ceasefire, giving London a diplomatic tool to manage the conflict through the UN to the Arab coalition’s advantage.

Britain’s rigid enforcement of this weapons embargo placed immense pressure on Israel at the very moment of its birth. The British Royal Navy effectively blockaded Israel’s coastlines, intercepting shipments of weaponry and Jewish volunteer fighters trying to reach the front lines.

Had it not been for the life-saving clandestine arms shipments supplied by Czechoslovakia during that exact window, the British-led embargo could have achieved the collapse of the newborn Israel.

This deep-rooted history directly explains modern British foreign policy alignments. Decades later, when the Islamic Republic’s secret nuclear facilities at Natanz were exposed in August 2002, Tony Blair’s government shifted the global spotlight.

In September 2002, Blair published the infamous “Iraq dossier” detailing Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

The March 2003 invasion deployed British troops into Shia-dominated southern Iraq, shattering the regional balance of power in favor of Tehran, creating a vacuum that allowed Iran to expand its regional dominance and build its proxy network threatening Israel.

By implementing trade bans on Judea and Samaria settlement goods and freezing export licenses for weapons that “materially contribute to the occupation,” they are running the exact same play: an enduring strategy to contain and undermine the sovereign Jewish state.

Yet, this performative gesture exposes Labour’s geopolitical impotence. Israel’s domestic defense sector is vastly more advanced than Britain’s, making any embargo obsolete.

Israel does not rely on the UK for weaponry; conversely, European powers increasingly depend on Israeli technology, evidenced by Germany’s purchase of the multi-billion-dollar Arrow 3 and Greece’s historic €3 billion deal for an all-Israeli multi-layered air defense architecture, including David’s Sling and Barak MX, to build its “Achilles Shield” network.

Furthermore, because the F-35 is an American-led program, Britain cannot disrupt parts destined for Israel without risking disruption to its own global aviation supply lines.

Ultimately, Labour’s actions are entirely performative.