Keir Starmer has backed the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and called on Iran to return to negotiations, saying the country’s nuclear programme was a “grave threat to international security”.
The prime minister said on Sunday there was a “risk of escalation” after the US strikes against Iran, including “beyond the region”.
“It is important that we now de-escalate the situation, stabilise the region and get the parties back around the table to negotiate,” he told broadcasters.
Donald Trump announced overnight that the US had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, joining Israel’s attack on the Tehran regime.
There was no UK involvement in the action. Starmer and the foreign secretary, David Lammy, had pushed for a diplomatic solution. The US made no request for any UK assistance, the Guardian understands.
Starmer was due to convene a Cobra meeting in London on Sunday afternoon after holding calls with the sultan of Oman and the king of Jordan. No 10 said the leaders agreed that “escalation of the conflict is in no one’s interests”.
As recently as Tuesday at the G7 summit, Starmer had said he did not have any indication the US was planning on joining the attack, though later in the week he had warned of a “real risk of escalation” in the conflict, adding there had been several rounds of discussions with Washington and “that, to me, is the way to resolve this issue”.
On Sunday morning, Starmer said: “Iran’s nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security. Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the US has taken action to alleviate that threat.
“The situation in the Middle East remains volatile and stability in the region is a priority. We call on Iran to return to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis.”
The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said the UK did not receive a request from the US to use its Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
He told Sky News: “We support the prevention of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. We had proposed a diplomatic course of action, as other European countries had done; the Iranians had rejected that.
“I know people will be waking up this morning and they’ll be worried. They’ll want to know what this means, and I do want to give them reassurance that whilst the British government has not been involved in these attacks, we have been making extensive preparations for all eventualities.”
Reynolds said the British people should be in no doubt that the Iranian regime did pose a threat to the UK, but he said regime change in Tehran was “not the question” when it came to these strikes.
“I wanted a different way to obtain this, but I cannot pretend to you that the prevention of Iran having a nuclear weapon is anything other than [in] the interests of this country,” Reynolds told the BBC.
“This is very different to what we saw with the invasion of Iraq … I think stability for the region would come about through an agreement where Iran would acknowledge that, because of its behaviour, no country in that theatre or the wider world would be able to countenance it having nuclear weapons.”
He said the threat from Iran was “an active one … this is at the forefront of risks to the United Kingdom and our security apparatus has to do a great deal to keep the country safe”.
Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Seyed Ali Mousavi, said his country was “considering the quantity and quality” of its reaction and retaliation for the US overnight strikes.
He refused to say if Iran would stop firing missiles at Israel, insisting it was defending itself in line with its sovereign rights.
Asked what Iran would do in response to the overnight US strikes, he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Our authorities are considering the quantity and quality of our reaction and retaliation. Everything is going to be according to our rights.”
After MI5 said Iran had been linked to more than 20 plots in the UK, Mousavi claimed that reports and suggestions that Iran posed a threat to the UK were based on misinformation.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, told the same programme: “We were very cautious all throughout, as you can see, and we decided to leave it to the Americans and the president if he wanted to carry out the strike. The strike was aimed at very specific installations where the Iranian nuclear programme was advanced.
“It’s quite clear to me that the Iranian nuclear programme has been hit substantially [but] … I don’t know the details.”
In an address to the US public from the White House, Trump said there could be further strikes if Iran retaliated. “There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,” he said.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the attacks “will have everlasting consequences” and that Tehran “reserves all options” to retaliate.
Lammy had urged the US to pull back from the brink on a visit to Washington for talks with his counterpart, Marco Rubio, before attending talks with Iran on Friday alongside European allies in Geneva.
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the US strike was “decisive action against a regime that fuels global terror and directly threatens the UK. Iranian operatives have plotted murders and attacks on British soil. We should stand firmly with the US and Israel.”
Overnight, Iran launched a ballistic missile barrage against Israel in retaliation against the US action.
