DONALD TRUMP and Benjamin Netanyahu’s escalating war on Iran is criminal, unprovoked and wrong: Britain must be kept out of it, and Keir Starmer should pay a price for his craven apologism for such lawless violence.

The United States did not, as he claims, act to “alleviate” the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, something there is no evidence it is doing even if nuclear-armed states like Britain, Israel or the US had any right to ban other countries from acquiring weapons they possess themselves.

And the Prime Minister’s demand that Iran “return to the negotiating table” is dishonest, designed to mislead. Iran was negotiating when Israel attacked it, with further rounds of talks with Washington scheduled — though why any country should trust the US in negotiations when the thug in the White House tore up the last nuclear agreement it was party to is an open question.

Since Israel’s brutal attacks — which have killed hundreds of civilians — Iran has kept talking, meeting European foreign ministers including Britain’s David Lammy on Friday. It has also signalled its desire for an off ramp, offering to stop the exchange of fire as soon as Israel does.

Its offers have been ignored. This is a war of aggression for which the aggressors, Israel and the United States, bear sole responsibility. And it is a war based on lies: as with Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction,” hyped up by George Bush and Tony Blair to justify an illegal invasion, Iran’s nuclear programme is simply an excuse.

This is, from Netanyahu’s point of view (and the Israeli PM has been claiming Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon for over 20 years), about “reshaping the Middle East,” something he has publicly vowed to do. We know how he intends to reshape it: through genocide and war.

The attacks on Iran are part of the war on Palestine, both because Iran has traditionally supported Palestinian resistance groups (something harder for it to do now its ally the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria has been replaced by a pro-Israel jihadist junta) and because Netanyahu needs to keep widening the war.

It is his way of ensuring there can be no ceasefire in Gaza, which in turn is because, more and more openly, his government is committed to ethnically cleansing the whole of Palestine. Even as it lobs missiles into Iranian neighbourhoods it has accelerated the mass murder of Palestinians, gunning them down as they walk towards its own vetted aid distribution centres, firing indiscriminately into unarmed crowds.

As the hundreds of thousands who marched again for peace on Saturday understand, this is one war, and the government must not be allowed to pretend otherwise. Stopping the war on Iran is part of stopping the genocide in Gaza: and British ministers or MPs who excuse or support the war on Iran are facilitating that genocide.

Nor can we permit worsening government repression on supposed national security grounds, which is again directly linked to its complicity in genocide.

The brave Palestine Action activists who sprayed paint on RAF aircraft at Brize Norton (exposing that institution’s ineptitude in the process) are not terrorists, and any MP who backs Yvette Cooper’s bid to ban their organisation on that absurd basis needs to feel the anger of the streets.

The Irish band Kneecap are not terrorists, and Starmer’s bid to bar them from Glastonbury or bully the BBC into censoring them must be exposed and defeated. The charges still facing Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham over a peaceful demonstration they helped organise in January must be dropped.

The British government is cheering on a war with devastating consequences to appease a far-right demagogue. It must face relentless pressure to break with Trump or face political oblivion.