Perhaps the time has finally come for the Labour administration at Westminster to forget its snowflake attitude towards Iran and throw its weight 100 per cent politically and militarily behind Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran.
Put bluntly, is Downing Street going to wait until suspected Iranian terrorists carry out either a suicide bombing or even unleash an Omagh-style no-warning massacre before it gives the green light to the round-up of terror suspects?
Because The United States is specifically using RAF Fairford as a base for American bombers to attack Iran, the militant Islamic regime in Iran in turn has threatened to carry out attacks in the UK.
Warfare now in the 21st century is roughly divided into three main types. Firstly, nuclear warfare, which would be devastating for the globe as a whole as no one seriously wants to press the red buttons.
Secondly, conventional warfare, which is more commonly known as ‘boots on the ground’ as witnessed by both the old Soviet Union and the Allied Coalition in Afghanistan.
Thirdly, hybrid warfare, which blurs the lines between actual conflict and what is seen as a peace process. Again, put bluntly, this is just a fancy term for good, old fashioned terrorism.
This could also include cyber terrorism and security alerts which disrupt civilian life. Iran certainly would not dare the first type - nuclear, although could terrorists be capable of setting off a so-called ‘dirty bomb’ or is that the stuff of Hollywood film fiction?
Secondly, obviously given the geographical distance between the United Kingdom and Iran, there would be no way actual Iranian Revolutionary Guards would indulge in a uniformed attack in the UK.
This leaves the more obvious method - hybrid, or terrorism, as witnessed with the incident at the RAF base. The real danger is that a cell of radicalised terrorists now exists in mainland Britain, seeking to carry out - as Trump put its - ‘serious damage’ to several potential military, political or civilian targets in mainland Britain.
As well as a suicide bomber cell, there is also the threat posed by a so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorist along the lines of the Far Right activist Anders Brevik who killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in Norway in July 2011.
The key question which must be answered by the British intelligence community is - how do potential terrorists enter the UK?
Are we talking about so-called ‘sleeper’ cells that have been in the country for months, even years, before they are activated, or have they sneaked into the UK under the cover of the small boat crisis which has seen thousands of illegal asylum seekers and migrants cross the English Channel from France in recent years.
British PM Andy Burnham has already publicly recognised the potential threat from Iran because of the UK allowing the US to use English bases. But he still has to clearly address the issue of what the UK can realistically do to combat any terrorist threat from Iran.
A starting point can be to radically slash the foreign aid budget and divert that money into boosting the intelligence services and especially surveillance of potential terrorists either already in the UK or planning to enter the UK.
Given the number of illegal migrants who have already entered the UK, perhaps a more radical solution is needed, namely the introduction of the controversial method of selective internment.
However, the scheme does not have a good reputation as when it was introduced in Northern Ireland during the early Troubles in the Seventies, it was based on false or outdated information and only served to boost the IRA, not hinder it.
Hopefully, given the advances in intelligence gathering since that 1970s fiasco, potential suspects can be rounded up and held in the British equivalent of the former American base - Camp X Ray - at Guantanamo Bay.
From an intelligence point of view, the British and US authorities need to determine if the RAF Fairford incident could be firm evidence of Iran developing a so-called Triple Alliance of Terror. Iran already supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Could the third part be a similar IRA-style movement in the UK?
Could the purpose of any potential terror campaign in the UK be Iran trying to drive a political wedge between Westminster and the White House? If Iran is too sceptical about attacking the US directly in retaliation for American air strikes on Iran, Plan B would be to launch terrorist attacks against those nations which either allow the US to use its air bases, or allow US bombers to enter their air space en route to bombing targets in Iran?
The situation which the UK specifically and NATO in general finds itself in is that since the end of the formal Cold War with the old communist Soviet Union, there has been a ‘dumbing down’ of the British security forces in terms of training, human and physical resources, and especially budget cuts.
Has this in turn fuelled the development of hybrid war whereby the so-called nuclear super powers get ‘puppet’ organisations in other nations to do their work for them? Put bluntly, any Iranian activity in the UK would be met with quiet support in the other Triple Alliance of Russia, China and North Korea.
In this case, we could see the UK sucked into a so-called proxy war by the back door by having to combat Iranian terror alerts on UK territory, thus diverting much-needed aid from Ukraine and NATO.
In this respect, potential Iranian terror cells would be copying the terror campaign of the Provisional IRA’s so-called ‘England Department’ which targeted places, people and the security forces in mainland Britain during the Troubles.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News. |
