Blame Hollywood if you like, but Britain has drifted into that cliché scene where by-standers beg the hero not to cut the red wire. This week’s by-standers are Cabinet ministers and assorted world leaders, panicked that Israeli pilots might finish the job on Iran’s nuclear programme. The talk is all about “de-escalation”, as though you can politely handcuff a centrifuge and hope it learns some manners. Yet the red wire in question is attached to Tehran’s nuclear-bomb-in-waiting, and – brace yourself – Israel is prepared to yank it out.
Let’s admit what the diplomatic communiqués whisper: Iran is not enriching uranium for a school science prize. The International Atomic Energy Agency counts hundreds of kilos sitting at 60 per cent, a couple of turns from weapons-grade. Strap that payload to an intermediate-range Shahab and the footprint stretches far beyond Tel Aviv to nearby Europe. If you want a working definition of “clear and present danger”, that’s it – especially when the regime boasts that its reach is now “continental”.
Meanwhile, every time you map the region’s misery you find Tehran’s fingerprints. Hezbollah’s missiles in Lebanon, Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza, Shia militias turning Iraqi highways into shooting galleries, Houthis lobbing drones across the Red Sea – each a franchise in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ terror food-court. Pay, train, arm, repeat. The ayatollahs have franchised terror into a geopolitical Deliveroo – dispatching proxy couriers who drop rockets on Israel and drones on Red Sea shipping.
Against that backdrop, the suggestion that Israel must be reined in feels almost zoological – like silencing the guard dog while the burglar assembles Semtex in the neighbourhood. Yes, Israel’s operations spark unease; a bombing run is nobody’s idea of diplomacy. But allowing Iran to complete its nuclear sprint would be more than an escalation: it would be a time-release calamity.
Israel’s pilots and engineers are, in effect, buying the civilised world time that sanctions, resolutions and strongly worded letters never could. Knocking out centrifuges today means fewer warheads tomorrow, and fewer warheads means no regional arms race in 2030. In the cold arithmetic of strategy, that is a favour to every European capital even if they’re too squeamish to send so much as a thank-you tweet.
I can’t claim detachment here. When I was Defence Secretary, I ordered our RAF Typhoons to swat Iranian drones and missiles aimed at Israel out of the sky. The instruction was hardly altruism; it was raw British self-interest. A democracy under attack in the Middle East is the canary in the mineshaft for democracies everywhere, ours included.
Yet where is Britain now? On the sofa, nursing a mug of caution, terrified of back-bench grumbles. Ministers mumble about “balance”, as if there is moral symmetry between an elected parliament and a regime that hangs teenagers from cranes. The refusal to back Israel at this hinge-of-history moment is more than timidity; it is strategic vandalism. If Jerusalem falters, Tehran will re-rig its centrifuges in even deeper bunkers, ensuring the prime minister receives even grimmer nuclear briefings than the terrifying ones I was reading.
This isn’t the third act of a Hollywood thriller—there’s no director to yell “Cut!” if it all goes wrong. The wire is live, and the only steady hands belong to Jerusalem. The job is messy, costly, indispensable. If Britain keeps munching popcorn while the clock ticks, historians won’t applaud our “restraint”; they’ll mark it as the time we left a live Iranian warhead on Europe’s doorstep. And, Prime Minister, when the credits roll on that explosion, there is no post-production.
Sir Grant Shapps was Secretary of State for Defence from August 2023 to July 2024
