Patrick Wintour
The Guardian / August 29, 2024
Robert O’Brien says UK could face US counter-embargos and put its role in F-35 fighter jet project in danger.
Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned.
Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos. The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force as part of its bombing of Gaza.
The Labour government has yet to decide whether to suspend licences for arms exports to Israel over concerns that international humanitarian law may have been breached in the war in Gaza.
Speaking to the Policy Exchange think-tank, O’Brien also urged the UK government to do everything it could to shut down the international criminal court’s (ICC) investigation of Israel, accusing the body – which is headed by a British prosecutor, Karim Khan – of being highly selective over which leaders it chose to prosecute.
It is the first public sign of the scale of potential tensions facing a Labour government if it pursues a human rights-based foreign policy with the US under a Trump administration.
O’Brien said if a UK arms embargo was imposed “there is a potential there for a serious rift, whether it is a Harris or Trump administration, between the UK and the US and I would tread very carefully”.
He added: “The F-35 is a joint project and it is going to continue to go to Israel no matter what Turkey, the UK or any other country has to do with it. You would hate to see a situation where the UK is no longer a partner in the F-35 project or other advanced platforms because of a very ill-advised arms embargo on Israel.
“The consequences of an arms embargo on Israel is something the UK really needs to think about at a time when Russia and China are posing a massive threat to the west.”
He added: “A lot of hi-tech on which the UK relies comes directly or indirectly via Israel.”
He said the US would not be imposing an arms embargo on Israel, adding any allies that did would risk real danger and may imperil their own supply chains as well the ability to sell arms products in the US, such as from the British firm BAE Systems. An arms embargo would certainly lead to congressional action to put a counter-embargo on any UK sales in the US.
O’Brien said: “It is an extraordinarily dangerous policy proposal and has the potential to tear open the special relationship and really hurt the western alliance and NATO.”
O’Brien described the ICC as “really an impediment to peace in the region”, condemning the court’s scrutiny of Israeli politicians including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“For the ICC to go after Israeli leaders is a joke … The UK should take every step necessary to shut it down,” he said.
The UK has so far supported the ICC’s right to seek to prosecute Israeli and Hamas leaders. It has withdrawn its objection to the ICC having any legal status in relation to acts Israel stands accused of in the occupied territories, a move that implicitly accepts the ICC’s right to seek prosecutions.
The US has longstanding objections to the ICC, and has imposed US sanctions on its leaders.
Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for The Guardian
