The UK’s ambassador to Israel alerted London weeks in advance that an attack on Iran by US and Israeli forces was highly likely, a former diplomat at the embassy has revealed.
Ameer Kotecha, who quit the foreign office this week and had been based in Tel Aviv until last month, told Sky News he believed the prime minister and his cabinet then failed to take sufficient action to ensure the defence of British interests in the Middle East and Cyprus.
He said he was “surprised” that a Type 45 destroyer that can shoot down ballistic missiles was still alongside in Portsmouth, being readied for deployment, noting that there had been ample notice for HMS Dragon to have been sent to the region before the fighting started.
Mr Kotecha said the government’s limited response to the crisis in part pointed to a lack of preparedness by the UK for war following decades of defence cuts.
The former diplomat praised Simon Walters, the British ambassador in Tel Aviv, who he said is “excellent” and “very well plugged into the Israeli system”.
“He was following Israeli intentions vis-a-vis Iran for weeks, and it was highly likely that the Israelis and the Americans were going to strike Iran,” Mr Kotecha said in an interview.
“He was aware of that. He was having those conversations. He was reporting those conversations back to London, as is his job and as you would expect, for weeks before the first missiles, the first American strikes, I should say, happened.”
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Asked what response the ambassador received from his bosses, Mr Kotecha said: “He was reporting those things back. He was doing his job. Clearly, officials can do some things, but ultimately ministers need to make the really big judgment calls around, for example, deploying military assets. And clearly we didn’t do that.”
The UK did pre-emptively deploy fighter jets to Qatar and additional warplanes to an air base in Cyprus as well as sending some 400 additional military personnel to the region, including teams of ground-based air defence troops to bolster Britain’s defences in case Donald Trump did go to war with Iran.
Challenged on his claim that ministers had not heeded the warnings about probable conflict and whether he meant instead that they had not done enough, Mr Kotecha said: “I think that that’s right. They didn’t do enough. I mean this ship, HMS Dragon, I think is going to arrive in theatre two weeks after it’s needed.”
Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday announced he planned to send the Type 45 destroyer to help defend Cyprus after the sovereign base was hit by a drone.
However, the warship is not due to leave Portsmouth until next week because it needs to be loaded with missiles and crewed for the deployment.
Mr Kotecha said he was “surprised” at the decision not to deploy HMS Dragon sooner.
“Ultimately that’s with the prime minister, with the foreign secretary and with the attorney general. It’s the politicians that make those really big calls, so I don’t want to blame the officials for that decision, but I was surprised.”
He also said: “We could have done a lot more, but ministers seem to have either been caught off guard or actively didn’t want to take those steps, because they… are beholden in many ways to a very rigid interpretation of international law.”
The former diplomat, who spent more than 10 years at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, served under Mr Walters as head of Palestinian issues at the embassy in Tel Aviv in his final posting before handing in his resignation.
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He returned home just over a fortnight ago. His final day at the department was on Tuesday.
Mr Kotecha unusually marked his departure by writing an opinion piece in The Times to share frustrations he felt with the department and the wider Whitehall machine during his diplomatic career.
This included criticism of what he believed to be an overly strict interpretation of international law that he felt restricted the UK’s options.
The former diplomat also said he had been concerned about what he described as a tendency by the foreign office to spend too much time focused on “peripheral” matters instead of relentlessly focusing on supporting the UK national interest and national security.
Asked whether the government’s limited response to the Iran crisis exposed how the nation was not prepared for war, with a military hollowed out by cuts, Mr Kotecha said: “I think partly it was.”
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He said: “It was poor planning on the part of the government. But I think, yes, if you boil it down, what it really comes to is we haven’t invested enough in our military capabilities. We’ve allowed them to be whittled down at precisely the moment that the world is in its most dangerous place in decades. So I would like to see our defence spending ramp up.”
A spokesperson for the government responded to the allegations in a statement.
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“As the prime minister outlined, the UK moved defensive assets to Cyprus and Qatar in January and February including fighter jets, air defence missiles and advanced radar, to ensure we were in a heightened state of readiness in advance of any conflict beginning.
“Those jets were immediately put into the sky when strikes began, and we are reinforcing our military presence in Cyprus.
“This government’s priority remains the safety of British nationals in the region and reaching a negotiated settlement on Iran.”
