When missiles began striking Iran on Saturday, Britain made it clear that it had not taken part in the American and Israeli attacks and, early on Sunday, the British defense minister, John Healey, refused to say whether or not he supported them.
But by Sunday evening, Britain had granted the United States permission to use British military bases for a “specific and limited defensive purpose.” Then came news that a drone had crashed into a British air base in Cyprus, that the island’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said was Iranian.
With Iran apparently intent on stoking a wider conflagration, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain risks being dragged further than he wishes into the conflict.
In a prerecorded video statement released on Sunday night, Mr. Starmer said he had agreed to a request from the United States to allow it to use British bases for a “specific and limited defensive purpose”: to help to destroy Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots, or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles.”
British military involvement had previously been limited to deploying Typhoon jets on defensive patrols, allowing them to destroy an Iranian drone.
Mr. Starmer sought to reassure Britons that their country would not become embroiled in a wider war as it did more than two decades ago in Iraq — a conflict that still casts a long shadow over British politics.
“I want to be very clear: We all remember the mistakes of Iraq,” he said. “And we have learned those lessons.”
Britain, he said, would “not join offensive action,” adding that his decision to allow the United States to use British bases was based on collective self-defense and was in accordance with international law.
That was significant, not just because Mr. Starmer is a former human rights lawyer. He is also under pressure at home where some critics argue that Britain is getting sucked into an American and Israeli-led conflict.
On Monday, John McDonnell, a veteran left-wing lawmaker from Mr. Starmer’s Labour Party, told the BBC it was “important to point out the lessons of Iraq because I think we are being drawn in.”
With its military presence in the region, and its history of antagonistic relations with Iran, Britain was always a possible target for retaliation by the regime in Tehran.
In a statement, Britain’s defense ministry said it was “responding to a suspected drone strike” at the British air base in Akrotiri in Cyprus “at midnight local time” on Sunday. That would imply that the strike came shortly after Mr. Starmer’s announcement.
“Our force protection in the region is at the highest level and the base has responded to defend our people,” the statement added.
The attack at Akrotiri was not, however, the first report of drone activity potentially targeting Cyprus. Earlier on Sunday, Mr. Healey told Sky News that two Iranian missiles had “fired in the direction of Cyprus” — though Mr. Christodoulides wrote on social media that he had been reassured by Mr. Starmer that Cyprus was not being targeted.
The British government did confirm that some of its military personnel in Bahrain had been within several hundred yards of an Iranian missile and drone strike on Saturday.
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
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