The Iran crisis shows our special relationship with the US is all one-way

British leaders often cite our ties to America, but they don’t give us any sway, writes Sean O'Grady

It is unlikely that old bonds of sentiment will be sufficient to alter Trump’s determination to put ‘America first’ (Getty)

It is no exaggeration to say that the seven days since Donald Trump ordered the assassination of general Qassem Soleimani have shaken the world. Now that the aftershocks seem to have subsided, this past week has also revealed much about the state of the UK’s “special relationship” with the United States. It confirmed that it is, in fact, as asymmetrical as ever. When Americans speak of any special relationship, they are as likely to mean Israel, especially under the present administration.

The “special relationship” always has been something of a British conceit – and whatever influence past prime ministers may have enjoyed in Washington DC, Boris Johnson is plainly something of an afterthought. Britain was not consulted before the operation was launched, despite having vital interests in the region, and, of course, supposedly enjoying that “special” status.

The prime minister made sure that he said as little as possible about the operation until he had to turn up to prime minister’s questions (PMQs). The first British response – from Dominic Raab last Sunday and in a No 10 statement later – was measured, and stressed above all the need for “de-escalation”.

This, when it filtered though to the Trump administration, was not full-hearted enough, so at PMQs on Wednesday he talked up how evil General Soleimani had been, and how he had “British blood on his hands”.

However, the prime minister was also clear that the UK would not follow America’s example and formally withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even though it was all but deceased: “It’s our view that the JCPOA remains the best way of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran, the best way of encouraging the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, and we think that after this crisis has abated that that way forward will remain.

“It is a shell that is currently being voided, but it remains a shell into which we can put substance again.”

Contrast that with President Trump’s blunt demand: “The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China to recognise this reality. They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal, or JCPOA. And we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place.”

Of course, the so-called special relationship with America is coming into focus again because of Brexit and the imperative need for the UK to win as beneficial a trade agreement with the United States as possible. The recent statement by the Defra secretary, Theresa Villiers, that American chlorinated chickens could not be sold in the UK – and Johnson’s denials that US interests would be allowed access to the NHS - suggest that such a trade deal may be more difficult to negotiate than some imagine.

It is unlikely that old bonds of sentiment will be sufficient to alter Trump’s determination to put “America first”, and it is possible that the UK could fail to secure a close trade deal with the EU or the US over the next few years.

Dean Acheson, a former American secretary of state, famously observed once that “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”. That was in 1962, and in the following year a (Conservative) government made the first application for membership, which was eventually accomplished by another (Conservative) prime minister, Edward Heath, in 1973. This new role, a position of leadership in Europe, was precisely what Acheson had in mind when he made his speech: “Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role – that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being the head of a Commonwealth which has no political structure or unity or strength and enjoys a fragile and precarious economic relationship – this role is about played out.

“Great Britain, attempting to work alone and to be a broker between the United States and Russia, has seemed to conduct a policy as weak as its military power.”

Those words ring as true today as they did six decades ago, and the desire to cement the UK in the EU was a constant in US foreign policy until very recently.

It is true, though, that some British premiers and American presidents have enjoyed a warm, collaborative personal relationship. The last was probably Tony Blair’s with both George W Bush and Bill Clinton, but other famous examples were the bonds developed between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, James Callaghan and Jimmy Carter, Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy, and, most celebrated to this day, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. Macmillan, for example, managed to persuade the Americans to let the British have an “independent” nuclear deterrent, and Thatcher used force of personality to secure Washington’s assistance over the Falklands. The Thatcher-Reagan alliance was also effective in winning the Cold War with Russia.

A lasting legacy has been the intelligence and security cooperation between the powers (though this was sometimes suspended when the UK judged that the British could not be trusted to keep their secrets). Tony Blair offered useful support to US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the lasting damage of his own reputation.

Yet despite the mingling of British and American blood in two world wars and many other conflicts, the Americans have always insisted on their own freedom of action: Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary, freely declared that they would have invaded Iraq whatever the British decided to do.

At times, too, the UK has defied American pressure, notably when Harold Wilson refused President Johnson’s requests to send even a token detachment of British troops to the war in Vietnam: “Lyndon Johnson is begging me even to send a bagpipe band to Vietnam,” Wilson told his cabinet in December 1964.

Nor has the United States always been there to help the British economically, finding it irksome to be asked continually to prop up the pound, and its refusal to cancel debts almost crashed the British economy in 1931 and again in the late 1940s.

Moreover, while the British consume vast amounts of American pop culture and fast food, and obsess about Donald Trump, the Americans hardly notice the British, with notable exceptions from Shakespeare and the Beatles to Ricky Gervais and Piers Morgan.

All the evidence suggests that while Mr Trump has been complimentary about Johnson, it will not be enough to change the basic thrust of his administration’s policy on trade or anything else.

Trump’s lukewarm attitude to Nato suggests that even this pillar of the Atlantic alliance is weakening under the strain of American exceptionalism. They may be irritated when the British are slow to come into line over issues such as Iran, but the uncomfortable truth is that even if the British were the slavish poodles of America, a mere puppet, vassal state, the Americans would still offer little, if any, concession to them. The relationship just isn’t that special, and probably hasn’t been since the end of the Second World War.