America will need to put “boots on the ground” in Iran if Donald Trump wants to choose the next Supreme Leader, says Britain.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy also warned that Iran could end up with a more hardline leader than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed at the weekend in the initial US/Israeli airstrikes.
His comments came hours after a Government chartered flight from Muscat, Oman, landed at Stansted as the UK seeks to repatriate possibly more than 140,000 British citizens stranded in the Gulf.
Britain has refused to join Trump’s war on Iran, with Sir Keir Starmer stressing UK forces would only be involved offensively if there was a legal basis for doing so, a “thought-through plan” and that it was in the country’s national interest.
With little or no clarity about who will run Iran after the conflict ends, Mr Lammy, who is also Justice Secretary, told Sky News: “The challenge has always been that whilst Ali Khamenei may have gone there are others who are pretty hardline or could be worse.”
On Khamenei’s successor, he added: “In the end this will be for the Iranian people themselves when this intense period is over unless there is any suggestion of putting boots on the ground and I haven’t heard that at this stage.”
He later told BBC radio: “Clearly regime change I don’t think has been succeeded from the air anywhere in the world.”
With Trump’s administration threatening to step up its military action, Mr Lammy added: “It’s now for the US and Israel to set out their war aims as they began this action, principally because of their concerns both about the nuclear capability but also about their (Iran’s) ballistic missile capability which could reach southern Europe.”
Trump on Thursday demanded a say on choosing Iran’s new leader as the war escalated further, with US and Israeli jets hitting areas across the country and Gulf cities coming under renewed bombardment.
The US president described Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Supreme Leader, a hardliner who has been considered a favourite to succeed his father, as an unacceptable choice.
Trump also launched his fourth stinging attack on Sir Keir for refusing to allow the use of UK bases for offensive strikes by America and Israel on Iran.
The Prime Minister has strongly defended the UK’s stance, and questioned the legality of the US/Israeli airstrikes.
French president Emmanuel Macron has branded Trump’s Iran war as unlawful and Spain is refusing to allow US forces to use its bases.
Sir Keir gave permission on Sunday for the US to use the Diego Garcia military base on the Chagos Islands, and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, for defensive missions such as destroying Iranian missile sites, after Tehran attacked Gulf countries putting British citizens in danger.
US bombers are expected to arrive in Britain in coming days for defensive missions against Iran.
Meanwhile, the Government is facing growing criticism over protecting Cyprus after RAF Akrotiri on the island was hit by a drone strike.
France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have sent or are deploying naval assets in coming days to the eastern Mediterranean but HMS Dragon is only due to leave Portsmouth for Cyprus next week.
In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war.
Another 77 people have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says.
Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave ahead of airstrikes.
On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had hit a US tanker in the northern part of the Gulf and the vessel was on fire, the latest of numerous reports of such attacks.
Visiting an air force base in the south of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s achievements so far in Iran had been “great” but that “much work still lies ahead”.
