LONDON, March 1 — UK Defence Secretary John Healey said today that “few people will mourn” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the British government’s first public response to the Iranian supreme leader’s death in US-Israeli strikes.
“Iran and the regime he’s led for so long, it’s a source of evil, murdering its own citizens and sponsoring and exporting terror, including to countries like Britain,” Healey told Sky News.
He added that “the concern now, of course, is this regime is lashing out... in an increasingly indiscriminate and widespread way, and people will be really concerned that it’s not just military targets”.
Healey, who also spoke to the BBC, repeated the UK government’s insistence that British forces were involved in purely “defensive” operations, with warplanes operating from Qatar and Britain’s airbase in Cyprus.
He declined to comment on reports that London had denied the United States access to British bases worldwide to conduct its attacks on Iran and would not be drawn on the legality of the US-Israeli strikes.
“It is for the US to set out the legal basis of the action,” he told the BBC.
“Britain played no part in the strikes on Iran. We share, however, the primary aim of all allies in the region and the US that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon.”
Healey noted that around 300 UK armed forces personnel were “within several hundred yards” of drones and missiles that Iran fired at a US military base in Bahrain, while two ballistic missiles were “fired in the direction of Cyprus” on Saturday.
“It demonstrates how our bases, our personnel, military and civilians at the moment are at risk with a regime that is increasingly indiscriminate, widespread and uncontrolled in the attacks it’s mounting,” he said. — AFP
