BORIS JOHNSON: Iran could also be months away from getting a nuclear bomb. But by refusing to let Trump use UK air bases for potential strikes, the PM is successfully backing the mullahs… WHOSE SIDE IS STARMER ON?

Of all the threats to world peace there is one that terrifies just about everyone. It scares them in Washington. It scares us across Europe. It even frightens the Chinese and the Russians.

There is no serious government in the world, believe me, that is remotely happy with the idea of the current Iranian regime acquiring a nuclear weapon.

That is, of course, what the mullahs are now trying to do, and in spite of last year’s US-Israel attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, they could be far closer to the goal than we currently suppose.

We know that the Iranians already have a large quantity of processed uranium. We think they could rapidly refine this so that it could be ready to be used in a warhead – perhaps in a matter of weeks.

We think it might be only months before they are able to fit that warhead to a viable nuclear device.

It seems intuitively obvious that this must be true. The Iranians are brilliant and inventive people, with skilled scientists, and this is not exactly new technology. Atomic weapons have been around since the 1940s. The really extraordinary thing is that they have not done it sooner.

Now they seem to be on the cusp. As Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says: ‘We are running out of time.’

If the Iranians continue on their current path, they will rapidly be in a position to throw the world into strategic chaos. The ayatollahs would instantly be able to exert nuclear blackmail over their Sunni rivals, led by the Saudis, who would feel obliged to acquire nukes themselves.

A nuclear Iran would be in a position to strike Israel, a country that Ayatollah Khamenei has likened to a cancerous tumour. Worst of all, the Iranians might start spreading nuclear weapons to their fanatical proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis.

We are looking at a nightmare, a nuclear arms race in the most unstable part of the world, and a huge risk of fatal miscalculation. We must prevent it.

That is why President Trump has sailed his armada into the Gulf, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford – not because he wants war, but because he wants peace.

He needs to force the Iranians to negotiate, to forswear nuclear weapons and to step back from the brink.

Sadly it looks as though the only way he is going to be able to get a new deal with Iran is at least to threaten the use of force, of strikes against selected targets. This isn’t about regime change, or trying to conquer Iran. Everybody remembers the lessons of Iraq – certainly Trump, who opposed that war.

This is about using the threat of force to encourage the Iranians to do something that is profoundly in their own interests and the interests of the whole world, including Britain.

It is therefore astonishing that the UK Labour Government is refusing to help.

Starmer has told Trump that the US cannot use the air base at Fairford. He is therefore making it more difficult for the US to achieve its objectives, and to hold a stick over Iran. He is effectively siding with the mullahs.

Of course the Americans will find a way round it. If it comes to it, and they have to launch aerial attacks on Iranian targets, their planes will doubtless find a way of making the whole trip from Missouri, perhaps refuelling in mid-air.

But in sticking two fingers up to the White House, Starmer is sending the worst possible message at the worst possible time: that the UK under Labour can no longer be relied on.

No wonder Trump is pulling the plug on Starmer’s deranged and costly plan to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

As Trump says, it is a huge mistake for Starmer to imperil the vital US-UK airbase at Diego Garcia. The crazy Chagos plan is now all but dead – and the sooner Starmer recognises it, and saves the taxpayer £35billion, the better.

When is Starmer going to grasp the reality that our security – our nuclear umbrella – depends on America? And not just our security, but the security of the whole of Europe, including Ukraine. Talk to the Ukrainian generals and they will tell you how much they still rely on American assistance.

We are now approaching the fourth anniversary of that war, with the future of the heroic Ukrainians still in the balance.

This is not the time to be snubbing entirely reasonable requests from Washington, for help with the rogue nuclear ambitions of Iran.

For more than 100 years the chief geo-strategic function of the UK has been to keep the US committed to the safety of Europe and the rest of the world. We are fated by history, geography and the overwhelming facts of our national interest to be the chief custodians and advocates of the transatlantic alliance.

So why is Starmer failing one of his most important functions as UK PM? Why is he sticking two fingers up to Trump? Perhaps it is because he thinks his political position is now desperate, and he can see the votes in Trump-bashing. Perhaps he is trying to play to the Labour base – the keffiyeh-wearing Corbynistas. Perhaps he is thinking of the Muslim vote in the coming Gorton and Denton by-election.

Possibly, but I think the main reason for this strategic blunder is that he is intellectually dominated by his frenziedly woke and anti-colonial Attorney General Richard Hermer, who has told him that the UK cannot be party to an attack on Iran unless that country poses an ‘imminent’ threat to the UK.

What tripe that man talks. This country has been here many times before, but the best comparison was Ronald Reagan’s 1986 request to Margaret Thatcher to use British bases to strike at Libya – in retaliation for Gaddafi’s terrorist attack on US service personnel in a Berlin nightclub.

Labour protested vehemently. They said that the UK was under no threat from Gaddafi, and that we should not get involved, even passively.

Thatcher dismissed their complaints, and allowed the US planes to take off from Upper Heyford and Lakenheath. She allowed the US to use British bases to bomb Tripoli because she believed in our collective security, and in the paramount importance of the transatlantic alliance, and she was right.

In fact, the case for supporting Trump now is arguably stronger than the case for backing Reagan 40 years ago. What could be a more ‘imminent’ threat to Britain, and the world, than the mullahs getting their hands on a nuke in the next few months?

This is by far Starmer’s biggest and potentially costliest foreign policy mistake so far. He needs to abandon this Hermerist nonsense, and preferably sack Hermer.

It is time to show that we are willing to help stop the Iranians getting the atomic bomb; that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the US; that we remain a reliable ally.

It is time for someone to pick up the phone to Washington and say that if there is an application to use UK bases, as part of the US negotiations with Iran, then that request will not be refused.

That person must be Starmer.