It must be a comforting thought to those who oppose the military action against the Iranian regime that it is, to coin a phrase, a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing. It’s not our fight and not our war, they argue.

The Iranians have plotted and planned the assassination of British citizens, on British soil, for many years

The Iranians have plotted and planned the assassination of British citizens, on British soil, for many years

But the arrests this morning of four people – one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian nationals – on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service show how ludicrous such a view really is. (Six other men were also arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.) Iran has been our fight – our concern – for decades, and not simply because of its plans for a nuclear weapon and its use of terrorist proxies to create instability across the Middle East. It is our fight for a far more direct reason: the Iranians have plotted and planned the assassination of British citizens, on British soil, for many years. As Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy put it this morning, after the arrests: ‘Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism globally and sadly, that is in effect in our own society as well. Our intelligence services and counter-terrorism police have thwarted lots of action over the last few years.’

What an irony. The government has tried to pretend that none of what is going on at the moment in the skies above Iran is our business, and that our involvement now is purely defensive, a reaction to Iran’s response to an attack that we didn’t support.........

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