THE joint US-Israel attack on Iran is an illegal war. We should do everything we can to prevent Britain’s further involvement in it, and distance this country from Trump’s reckless war rampage. We would all be safer as a result.

The British government has got itself in a terrible mess, once again, by following the US into an illegal war.

The government’s excuses for supporting it bear no scrutiny. They have as little weight as the various US justifications for the war itself.

It is ridiculous and dishonest to claim that the war is justified because the regime in Tehran is an odious one. That is for the people of Iran to decide. It is also completely hypocritical since it was the US and Israel (with the help of Britain) which recently installed the al-Jolani regime in Syria, with a leadership so odious that it has been aligned with both al Qaida and Isis.

The same actors have also been responsible for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, so they have no moral standing to decide who is fit to lead a country.

Under international law, a country may launch a pre-emptive attack against a foe if it has clear evidence that it is about to come under attack. But no-one in the Trump administration has offered a jot of evidence that this was the case.

Recently, US Senator Mark Warner reported from a briefing he and others had been given from the Pentagon, the CIA and others. He told reporters: “I saw no intelligence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of pre-emptive strike against the United States of America.”

The alternative route is to seek approval from the UN security council for war, which is what Bush and Blair refused to do. But Trump holds the UN in such contempt that he recently sent Melania to chair a meeting on protecting children in conflicts, shortly after the US-Israeli forces had killed 165 schoolgirls and staff in bombing an Iranian school.

Other claims, such as preventing the imminent development of nuclear weapons, are equally spurious. UN inspectors confirm that Iran has no enriched uranium, which is required to make nuclear warheads.

Defending neighbours does not stack up either, as the recent attacks on US assets in the region are clearly a retaliation for the initial strikes. In addition, Arab states complain that US anti-missile defences have been diverted to protect Israel, which is the US’s overwhelming priority.

Instead, the one coherent argument for the war is that the US is attempting regime change.

Trump himself has periodically but inconsistently offered this as an explanation for the war. He clearly thinks this equates to justification. It does not.

In US and British eyes, Iran committed its original transgression when Mossadegh won the 1951 election in a popular, anti-imperialist tide. The decision to nationalise Iran’s oil was a fateful one, leading to his overthrow by US and Western intelligence agencies.

Their installation of the Shah as a brutal, absolutist monarch led to the popular Iranian Revolution in 1979 which deposed him and installed the clerical regime in power to this day.

But the Western powers led by the US once again exacted their revenge, by using Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to launch a ferocious war which led to one million dead, which was eventually ended in stalemate in 1988.

More recently, Iranian support for Palestinian fighting forces means that Iran is always Israel’s enemy number one. There is too a permanent faction of the US security establishment which adopts to the same posture.

This explains why the US was so keen to go to war. It may also explain Iranian hostility to the US, and why “regime change from the skies” was never a realistic option.

From this perspective, there is no justification for the war. There is also no legal, moral or political justification for British government support for it.

There are now widespread reports that Keir Starmer was in favour of supporting US-Israeli aggression from the outset but met resistance in Cabinet. Starmer probably asked the US to reformulate its request, so that it could be passed.

In any event, his subsequent distinction now between “offensive” and “defensive” operations is puerile and demeaning. The entire project is an illegal war of aggression.

Pretending that it becomes defensive because it targets Iranian missile capacity (who polices that?) would not pass a first-year law exam. Iranian missiles are in response to being bombed.

Among other broken promises, in order to get elected as Labour leader, Stamer offered 10 pledges. Pledge four was headlined: “Promote Peace and Human Rights.” It said, “No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.”

Starmer often asks us to judge him his record. His problem is that many of us do.

We need to create an alternative force for peace and cannot rely on broken promises and legal contortionists. This is especially true as Iran is not an isolated case.

Under Trump, the US is on a military rampage, continuing wars inherited from Biden and bombing many other countries besides. Cuba is now besieged for the state purpose of regime change.

It is important to remember that we have overwhelming public opinion on our side on the Iran war, which is highly unusual at the outset of a conflict. Opinion polls put support for the war below 30 per cent, opposition at just under 50 per cent. Crucially, there has been an excellent statement opposing the war from the trade unions, including two of our largest unions, Unison and Unite. This was echoed by the TUC.

Parliamentarians can do something about this. Some of us have co-sponsored a Bill put forward by Jeremy Corbyn preventing military action unless prior approval has been granted by Parliament. It has been supported by MPs from Your Party, independents, the Greens and the Labour left.

This is a real political alternative to the war party, which includes the Labour leadership, the Tories and Reform UK.

It is important that there is a strong voice to oppose the relentless drumbeats of war from the British media.

Working together, we can be a real pole of attraction for the majority which opposes this terrible war.

Diane Abbott is Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.