What countries have a defense sector, if the UK doesn't?
Last time I looked Iran and the UK are quite some distance from each other, and Iran has inexplicably neither been launching missiles at the UK, nor threatening to, and is apparently not even capable of it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo
So the justification for these "defensive" bombing runs on Iranian mountain sites from Fairford remains mysterious.
The UK's arms industry is - like most things associated with the establishment - an exercise in turning privilege into cash, so it's not a surprise to see Senior Figures doing the media rounds in establishment narrative factories like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
Readers with the money and connections to make a difference already know how the game is played.
Readers who don't should perhaps be allowed to keep their happy fantasy that the UK isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as a mercy.
They are also allied with Russia who are doing the same.
They aren't some innocent party here. Geopolitics is complicated and not some black and white good guy bad guy mechanics.
> one of the most corrupt countries in the world
A ridiculous exaggeration given what a lot of other countries are like.
I guess it's debatable whether the drone attack was proportional. I'd say that attack on clearly military installation of active ally is proportionate. Bombing bases in Britain would be more appropriate I think, since that's where the bombers that attacked Iran flew from and were loaded with weapons.
Note my comment above. If anything, it was under-proportional. It may also be mentioned that Akrotiri base is a remanent of the British colonial occupation of Cyprus. See also:
https://greekcitytimes.com/2026/03/09/protests-cyprus-britis...
Oh, you mean that base the UK had let the US use for its attacks on Iran?
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/2/starmer-lets-us-...
> Iran has also been sponsoring terrorism in the UK.
You remind me of that 'Yes Prime Minister' episode when Hacker and Humphrey decided to announce they were expelling so-many Soviet diplomatic staff because they were supposedly engaged in espionage.
Claiming that the UK doesn't support diplomacy through violence then transitioning into this gem has to be one of the wildest juxtapositions I've seen this year. Do you classify the US strikes on Iran as uniformly offensive or defensive in nature? Or do you think there is a mix? How would you classify a US bombing run on anti-air defences in the opening phase of the conflict?
It's pretty obvious how the the UK's actions vs. Iran's, or even the US's, are different.
If UK/US wanted to be in the in the clear they could have asked UNSC to authorize use of force against Iran.
Its role has been entirely defensive, and legal under international law as part of the right to self-defence.
UK got involved in bombing Iran even when attack on its base on Cyprus came from Lebanon and would have made more sense to attack the source of the attack if the goal was actual self-defense. That is if we accept the decision was in response to the attack itself, and not to pressure and public humiliation from Trump. Also Turkey also got under missile attack from Iran, and managed to use diplomacy/other means to de-escalate. So not joining the war was a possibility.
Instead of self-defence or helping stop the war, UK helped aggressors in making their attacks easier and deepened/prolonged the war that way, at great cost to the world. At a time when de-escalation was still possible, UK chose to contribute to the war on the side of the aggressors. Who knows why. Maybe they believed it would be a quick war or whatever and Iran would collapse quickly just like the countries UK decided to aggress against in the past like Iraq.
Similarly, permission for US aircraft to use British bases was given conditionally, allowing only strikes on Iran’s missile and drone infrastructure being used to target other countries, and was given after the war had begun and after the drone strikes on Cyprus.
Those strikes on Cyprus involved Iranian-manufactured drones provided to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps explicitly took credit for the strikes on Cyprus. So let’s not pretend this was some unrelated attack.
Notably, many other countries sent military forces to protect Cyprus too, including Greece, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, with Ireland even offering to join. Several of those countries were strongly opposed to the war and had denied the use of their airspace and bases to the US. Were they all ‘acting in defense of aggressors’ too?
Once again, it’s possible to both condemn the actions of the US and Israel in their violations of international law while also condemning Iran for doing the same. The illegality of one does not justify the illegality of the other.
Well, no in fact it isn't. Hence the question. Like, say the US bombs an Iranian city then the Iranians counter-strike a US base somewhere in the Middle East with an IRBM or whatever they are called. Sake of argument, the base isn't being actively used in the attack.
If the US response to that strike is to destroy the launcher, are you going to characterise that response as fundamentally offensive or defensive in nature? The US isn't hitting the launcher in a premeditated way. Note that the US base probably isn't on US soil since Iran can't hit targets that far away.
Reminds of the old joke, "What propaganda? We don't have propaganda."
It didn't attack anyone until it was attacked.
It has been defending itself.
However it should have been dealt with earlier rather than latent bombing.
Anyway, I live in the UK, and I don't swallow the same propaganda as you.
Do you know any actual Iranians? I do!
That goes far beyond what’s permissible in international law in response to an attack.
In my view the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were illegal, reprehensible, and deeply stupid. But that doesn’t mean Iran is allowed to do whatever it wants afterward, especially to countries not directly involved in hostilities. In this case Iran has also broken international law.
Iran attacked US forces and bases all across the Gulf, which played pivotal roles in the USA/Israel attacks.
Radars, airfields, HIMARS installations, airports used for refuelling US tankers, and anywhere that hosted the aggressors in any way were and are fair game.
You can't say Iran attacked innocent and peaceful Kuwait whilst ignoring the US forces firing HIMARS into Iran from Kuwait. Iran has every right to attack those US forces wherever they are parked.
I see you snuck in ‘airports used for refuelling US tankers’ there, but Iran hit passenger terminals and other civilian-only parts of airports. That’s not permitted under international law.
Moreover, none of the Gulf countries allowed US forces to strike Iran from their territory, such as HIMARS firings, until after they were first attacked by Iran.
Being sceptical of US and Israeli motives is one thing, but that shouldn’t cause you to give Iran a free pass to break international law with impunity.
One man's civilian object is another man's barracks.
Also, mistakes happen, as demonstrated by the US targeting of a school.
Those Gulf states also got involved by shooting down Iranian drones, planes and missiles. Heck, the UAE even directly attacked Iran during the active phase of the US/Israel coalition attack, so they cannot pretend they were innocent.
I'm surprised that Iran didn't render the region uninhabitable by destroying desalination plants.
None of the civilian structures and facilities hit by Iran in neighbouring Gulf countries were hosting US forces. Again, that might have been justifiable depending on proportionality and the selectivity of targeting, but it didn’t happen.
Nor did Iran disclaim the attacks as mistakes. It only did so in one case, claiming over-eager local commanders, but didn’t indicate what it had done to prevent a recurrence.
There was nothing wrong with Gulf states shooting down Iranian drones, planes, and missiles being launched at them, that’s basic self-defence. Similarly, the UAE launched strikes on Iranian launchers only after first being hit, which is also basic self-defence in terms of international law.
By excusing Iran’s own illegal actions and war crimes you’re no better than the cheerleaders of the US and Israel’s illegal actions and war crimes.
Iran hitting the region’s desalination plants would’ve been a nuclear option, which would almost certainly have invited a wider global response to it and resulted in the end of the regime.
Not directly, mostly; and not through land grabs. The age of land grabs is pretty much over - but imperialism lives on in different form - including massive military interventions and covert operations for manipulating or replacing regimes, more that properly conquering and settling lands.
Today's UK is not an independent empire of this kind. It used to be; but now it is relegated to being a junior partner in its alliance with the US empire, mostly, and with the EU, to a lesser extent. This is reflected in its top 10 arms recipients, e.g. for 2024 [1]:
Saudi Arabia, £14bn United States of America, £8.3bn France, £5.2bn Qatar, £3.5bn Italy, £2.8bn Oman, £2.5bn Turkey, £2.3bn India, £2.3bn Norway, £2.2bn United Arab Emirates, £1.7bn
and there are also arms Israel for about £0.572bn; and the arming of Ukraine, a cooperation with both the US and European powers, as part of NATO's struggle against Russia.
The UK also sends troops as part of US imperial interventions, e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There are also UK-dominated or UK-only interventions abroad, but mostly if we go a few decades back [2].
[1] : https://www.thenational.scot/news/24272310.uk-arms-exports--...
[2] : https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uks-83-military-intervent...
If Iran struck all of the UK's missile factories and military bases, would it be considered a defensive or offensive action?
I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that appreciate UK's help in intercepting missiles.
I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that don't appreciate the US starting a war of choice.
Are you arguing that the entire world should never provide aid to other countries? Surely you're just calling for imperialist powers to gobble up the planet piece by piece.
It has centuries of exactly that at a global scale, and continued post-war neo-colonial land grabbing and pressuring, plus eager participation in all the imperialist games of its larger brother.
I mean, just mentioning "Tony Blair" is enough...
Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie.
That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset.
For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports.
For all their failures, the allies never bombed cities with nerve agents.
> Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War
Which links to a page about the war:
> Iraq was aided by [...] the United States, the United Kingdom,
> After years of military and economic losses, decreasing morale, intensifying Iran–U.S. relations, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598.
So they basically did.
What do you think an llm would say if you asked it:
> Did the US and UK support Saddam Hussein when he was using weapons of mass destruction on Iranian civilians?
It's a motte-and-bailey fallacy that starts with countries and leaders having relationships in a global, interwoven world and ends with excusing a blood-thirsty dictator as if they had no agency.
We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.
In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.
The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.
Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.
Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country.
I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural.
The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated.
You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
[^2]: Kissenger, 1972
Nations (and people) exist in an ecosystem, and so will always behave accordingly, and always in their own interests. There are some emergent properties of ecosystems, one of which is that optimal behaviour is to acquire the maximum you are physically capable of defending, not the minimum that you need to survive.
It's perfectly reasonable for the US, the big fish in the pond, to leverage its advantages accordingly, and to the maximum. It would be a disservice to the US people if it did not. Smaller fish should indeed be glad that the big fish is as placid and strategically (rather than ideologically) motivated as it is, given the historically experienced alternatives.
All empires function differently. The modes of empire were very different between the British and other recent European empires, which were very different to the Soviets, the Ottomans, the Romans.
Empires are heterogeneous even within themselves over time and across Geographies. The British empire took a very different form in Ireland, to the Americas, to India, to Kenya.
Similarly the Soviet experience was very different between the Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia, Tajikistan; or in non-Soviet Warsaw pact countries, which were -- as for most countries in the American empire -- nominally independent, but practically not, see Hungary and Czechoslovakia for particularly pertinent examples.
Ultimately, this is a duck test thing. The American empire looks like an empire, acts like an empire, so to my mind it very much is an Empire.
> The US does not maintain colonies
This, I'm sorry, is categorically false. America has colonies in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I'd go further to suggest, that as Israel's most substantial economic and political backer, Israel could be considered something akin to a US colony in the Middle East.
Following your argument, every major power could be considered imperialistic, which kind of defeats the purpose of the word. Aye the US maintains some minor, vestigial, colonies. However it does not engage in imperial conquest. South Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan are not part of US territorial holdings, and it was never a US war objectives to make them so.
We have to draw some lines somewhere, otherwise "imperialist" just means "really big". If you disagree, name a non-imperialist world power.
Territorial conquest here is very much a legal, not a practical distinction. To return to my previous point, different empires function differently. I don't think absorption into one's de-jure territory is is necessarily a defining characteristic here. Much of India under the British, for example, was run through vassals.
To address your question directly, I'd say India is a major world power, with about four times the population of the US, and you'd be hard pressed to describe them as an empire.
China, for its part, maintains three overseas bases, only one of which in a country it has sent troops into during a conflict (Cambodia). This is in comparison to over fifty US bases, the largest of which are all very much the result of invasions.
In the 21st century, China has had a few border skirmishes with India. In the 21st century alone, the US has fought in Afghanistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Uganda, DRC, CAR, South Sudan, Niger, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Venezuala, and Nigeria.
If you want to pin me down on a definition, I'd say an empire is a network of countries, controlled by and for the benefit of a central country, predominantly taken by force and maintained at least to some extent through the threat of force.
How would you define one?
I tend to agree. The keyword is "control". The US does not control, it influences. The distinction is of kind, not of degree.
As a contrast I offer the former-Soviet empire, which was very much controlled from Moscow in a way Berlin is simply not controlled from Washington today. Much in the same way that Russia is attempting to control eastern Ukraine.
We need different words for these very different modes of existence. The Soviets controlled so they were an empire. The US influences so, despite being very large and powerful, and using that power to further its interests, it is not.
Empire is not defined by number of wars. China/Beijing exercises control over several nations that would otherwise be independent of it (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, nominally Taiwan). Modern India is not an empire (though Mughal India very much was), neither is it exactly a major world power.
Not to mention he was never punished even for blatant violations, has been trusted with positions of power and influence since, and is making a public political comeback in 2026 too.
Why did British people decide to move from the Northern Hemisphere to this island? Because the climate looked similar?
And yes, here is a dispute between a historically imperialist versus a settler state. It’s weird.