The US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a detailed press conference on Monday afternoon in an update.
Hegseth referred to some “media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars,’ stop.
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless.
“Our generation knows better, and so does this president.”
He then aimed at Sir Keir Starmer, who has refused to help the US by denying them access to use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia air bases, and he also praised leaders who have supported the war on Iran.
Hegseth said, “unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.”
“We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it,” Hegseth told reporters.
The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also ripped into Starmer, saying he is “frankly pathetic.”
Farage told a press conference: “I do believe the American president and the Israelis are right in what they are doing. I find the actions of our Prime Minister – or the inactions, perhaps I should say, of our Prime Minister – frankly pathetic.
Farage added that this is “something that the President [Trump] has responded to already by saying that he is deeply disappointed.
He concluded: “I do believe that Starmer’s actions don’t just threaten the special relationship, but probably he has posed, or did pose, a major threat to Nato.
Sir Michael Ellis delivered a sharp rebuke to Starmer regarding the government’s response to US and Israeli military operations against Iran.
Speaking to GB News, the former Attorney General described the Prime Minister’s position as “pathetic weakness,” accusing him of “appeasement” and criticizing what he called “vacillation, equivocation, hedging, indecision, and paralysis.”
Sir Michael suggested that any apparent shift in the government’s tone amounted to little more than a “breakdown in the middle of the road,” implying that there was policy paralysis rather than decisive leadership. He argued that Britain should firmly align itself with the United States and Israel, which he described as “fighting for Western civilization” and acting in the interests of the Iranian people.
These remarks highlight growing domestic political divisions over the UK’s stance on the escalating conflict in the Middle East. The Prime Minister has maintained that British forces are engaged only in defensive operations in the region, stressing the importance of avoiding further escalation. However, opposition critics contend that the UK should adopt a more unequivocal position in support of its closest allies.
He told GB News: “I’m afraid it’s pathetic weakness from Keir Starmer. If it is a U-turn, they’ve sort of broken down in the middle of the road, blocking other traffic, because what the United Kingdom should be doing is helping the United States and Israel, who are fighting for Western civilisation and also fighting for the Persian people, who have been subjugated and murdered by their theocratic regime for decades.
“We’re seeing our British allies around the region and British territory in the region being attacked, both in Bahrain, where there’s a naval base and British military personnel, and on the island of Cyprus, which since 1960 has been independent, but which has maintained British sovereign bases in the RAF base there in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.”
The US President Donald Trump told The Telegraph on Monday that he is “disappointed” with the British Prime Minister over issues surrounding the Chagos Islands.
Trump told The Telegraph: “That’s probably never happened between our countries before. It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
Starmer said on Monday that he will now allow the US to use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, but only for defensive purposes.
Trump said, “It is useful. It took far too much time. Far too much time.”
