[einpoklum]

1. Calling it the "defense sector" is already quite biased. Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity. Or just call it the "arms industry" etc. If we were less charitable, we could well call it the "war industry".

2. Reading the article we note there's quite some overlap between arms industry links and links to Israel's fundraising and lobbying circles. I wonder whether UK media discloses those links.

[philipallstar]

> Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity.

What do you mean? As in invading other countries?

[defrost]

Just on the facts,

* assisting US offensive actions,

* weapons sales for offensive usage (eg: The UK government admits that Saudi Arabia has used UK weapons, made by companies around the UK, in its attacks on Yemen.)

[philipallstar]

How is that "almost all"?

[defrost]

Did I say that?

Perhaps direct your Socratic Simplicio more accurately.

[philipallstar]

You were answering this:

> > Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity.

> What do you mean? As in invading other countries?

[shevy-java]

He is quite correct though. By calling it "defence" industry, it is insinuated that this is always a moral right use of arms. In reality one would have to look on a case by case basis to see which use really qualifies as defence. In many cases I would not call it defence, for instance, if money is used to overthrow other governments and so forth. Or the Falklands War as an example - technically one could claim the UK had to "defence" its territory, but at the same time one has to question the use of colonies in the first place.

[philipallstar]

The Falklands weren't colonised by the British in the way you probably mean. They were settled by them - the people of the Falklands are the descendents of British settlers.

Why wouldn't you call a military action to stop Argentina invading them "defence"?

[flumpcakes]

The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs like Russia, or diplomacy through violence. In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles. So no, it is in fact the defense sector.

What countries have a defense sector, if the UK doesn't?

[TheOtherHobbes]

Iraq and Afghanistan might disagree with your first point.

Last time I looked Iran and the UK are quite some distance from each other, and Iran has inexplicably neither been launching missiles at the UK, nor threatening to, and is apparently not even capable of it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo

So the justification for these "defensive" bombing runs on Iranian mountain sites from Fairford remains mysterious.

The UK's arms industry is - like most things associated with the establishment - an exercise in turning privilege into cash, so it's not a surprise to see Senior Figures doing the media rounds in establishment narrative factories like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail.

Readers with the money and connections to make a difference already know how the game is played.

Readers who don't should perhaps be allowed to keep their happy fantasy that the UK isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as a mercy.

[graemep]

Iran attacked the British base in Cyprus with drones so has directly attacked British territory. Iran has also been sponsoring terrorism in the UK. Iran has also attacked an American base on British territory.

> one of the most corrupt countries in the world

A ridiculous exaggeration given what a lot of other countries are like.

[megous]

Helping the aggressor with its offense or defense during the aggressive acts is taking part in the aggression. States have international obligation to not engage in or promote aggression and to not take part in it. UK voluntarily took this obligation on itself.

I guess it's debatable whether the drone attack was proportional. I'd say that attack on clearly military installation of active ally is proportionate. Bombing bases in Britain would be more appropriate I think, since that's where the bombers that attacked Iran flew from and were loaded with weapons.

[einpoklum]

> whether the drone attack was proportional

Note my comment above. If anything, it was under-proportional. It may also be mentioned that Akrotiri base is a remanent of the British colonial occupation of Cyprus. See also:

https://greekcitytimes.com/2026/03/09/protests-cyprus-britis...

[einpoklum]

> Iran attacked the British base in Cyprus with drones so has directly attacked British territor

Oh, you mean that base the UK had let the US use for its attacks on Iran?

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/2/starmer-lets-us-...

> Iran has also been sponsoring terrorism in the UK.

You remind me of that 'Yes Prime Minister' episode when Hacker and Humphrey decided to announce they were expelling so-many Soviet diplomatic staff because they were supposedly engaged in espionage.

[cryo32]

Iran has been funding terrorist networks who are active in the UK and has taken direct action against UK citizens before on numerous occasions.

They are also allied with Russia who are doing the same.

They aren't some innocent party here. Geopolitics is complicated and not some black and white good guy bad guy mechanics.

[dgroshev]

To add some pretty hard data to this: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/fiona-and-irans-role-in-the-...

[roenxi]

> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles.

Claiming that the UK doesn't support diplomacy through violence then transitioning into this gem has to be one of the wildest juxtapositions I've seen this year. Do you classify the US strikes on Iran as uniformly offensive or defensive in nature? Or do you think there is a mix? How would you classify a US bombing run on anti-air defences in the opening phase of the conflict?

[flumpcakes]

The UK has only allowed the US to use their air bases to strike Iranian offensive capability and intercept missiles launched towards middle eastern cities. Iran bombed an airport in Kuwait yesterday, for example.

It's pretty obvious how the the UK's actions vs. Iran's, or even the US's, are different.

[roenxi]

> It's pretty obvious how the the UK's actions vs. Iran's, or even the US's, are different.

Well, no in fact it isn't. Hence the question. Like, say the US bombs an Iranian city then the Iranians counter-strike a US base somewhere in the Middle East with an IRBM or whatever they are called. Sake of argument, the base isn't being actively used in the attack.

If the US response to that strike is to destroy the launcher, are you going to characterise that response as fundamentally offensive or defensive in nature? The US isn't hitting the launcher in a premeditated way. Note that the US base probably isn't on US soil since Iran can't hit targets that far away.

[megous]

Yeah, "striking offensive capability" of a country is aggression and the country that strikes, and it's helpers are all aggressors and in the wrong as far as intl. law goes. You need to work on understanding how causality works. What happened yesterday has no bearing on what happened 2 months ago.

If UK/US wanted to be in the in the clear they could have asked UNSC to authorize use of force against Iran.

[_djo_]

Nope. The UK only responded after its own territory had been struck, as had that of allies in the region who were not part of the US and Israel’s actions.

Its role has been entirely defensive, and legal under international law as part of the right to self-defence.

[megous]

UK started moving its military assets to middle east way before the war, was militarily acting in defense of aggressors and their allies from day one (and also in previous conflicts), and allowed to use its bases for bombing campaigns from the second day of the war, before their base was attacked. (announcement came before the attack, after Starmer got publicly called out by Trump)

UK got involved in bombing Iran even when attack on its base on Cyprus came from Lebanon and would have made more sense to attack the source of the attack if the goal was actual self-defense. That is if we accept the decision was in response to the attack itself, and not to pressure and public humiliation from Trump. Also Turkey also got under missile attack from Iran, and managed to use diplomacy/other means to de-escalate. So not joining the war was a possibility.

Instead of self-defence or helping stop the war, UK helped aggressors in making their attacks easier and deepened/prolonged the war that way, at great cost to the world. At a time when de-escalation was still possible, UK chose to contribute to the war on the side of the aggressors. Who knows why. Maybe they believed it would be a quick war or whatever and Iran would collapse quickly just like the countries UK decided to aggress against in the past like Iraq.

[themgt]

> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability ...

Reminds of the old joke, "What propaganda? We don't have propaganda."

[CrzyLngPwd]

Iran.

It didn't attack anyone until it was attacked.

It has been defending itself.

[_djo_]

Iran attacked countries that played absolutely no role in the US and Israel’s attack on it, including some (like Oman) that have been fairly closely allied to the regime.

That goes far beyond what’s permissible in international law in response to an attack.

In my view the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were illegal, reprehensible, and deeply stupid. But that doesn’t mean Iran is allowed to do whatever it wants afterward, especially to countries not directly involved in hostilities. In this case Iran has also broken international law.

[CrzyLngPwd]

That's very naive.

Iran attacked US forces and bases all across the Gulf, which played pivotal roles in the USA/Israel attacks.

Radars, airfields, HIMARS installations, airports used for refuelling US tankers, and anywhere that hosted the aggressors in any way were and are fair game.

You can't say Iran attacked innocent and peaceful Kuwait whilst ignoring the US forces firing HIMARS into Iran from Kuwait. Iran has every right to attack those US forces wherever they are parked.

[_djo_]

If Iran had limited its strikes to US facilities in the Gulf I might have agreed with you. But it didn’t, it hit civilian targets too, all which had nothing to do with the American and Israeli campaign.

I see you snuck in ‘airports used for refuelling US tankers’ there, but Iran hit passenger terminals and other civilian-only parts of airports. That’s not permitted under international law.

Moreover, none of the Gulf countries allowed US forces to strike Iran from their territory, such as HIMARS firings, until after they were first attacked by Iran.

Being sceptical of US and Israeli motives is one thing, but that shouldn’t cause you to give Iran a free pass to break international law with impunity.

[CrzyLngPwd]

Iran quite naturally hit anything of significant use to the US, or that might hurt the US war effort, and some of those civilian objects were housing US forces who fled their bases in those countries.

One man's civilian object is another man's barracks.

Also, mistakes happen, as demonstrated by the US targeting of a school.

Those Gulf states also got involved by shooting down Iranian drones, planes and missiles. Heck, the UAE even directly attacked Iran during the active phase of the US/Israel coalition attack, so they cannot pretend they were innocent.

I'm surprised that Iran didn't render the region uninhabitable by destroying desalination plants.

[cryo32]

They have been trying to kill people in the UK for years. And have been funding proxies everywhere, some of whom have attacked the UK. We're not really even involved and I find it hard to agree with this point.

However it should have been dealt with earlier rather than latent bombing.

[CrzyLngPwd]

You could easily be describing the UK, Israel, and the USA, lol.

Anyway, I live in the UK, and I don't swallow the same propaganda as you.

[cryo32]

Which bit is the propaganda?

Do you know any actual Iranians? I do!

[jeltz]

I do and I agree with him. Iran is just one of many on a long list of supporters of terrorism which includes the US, the UK and Israel, plus many more countries like Turkey and Russia.

[einpoklum]

> The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs

Not directly, mostly; and not through land grabs. The age of land grabs is pretty much over - but imperialism lives on in different form - including massive military interventions and covert operations for manipulating or replacing regimes, more that properly conquering and settling lands.

Today's UK is not an independent empire of this kind. It used to be; but now it is relegated to being a junior partner in its alliance with the US empire, mostly, and with the EU, to a lesser extent. This is reflected in its top 10 arms recipients, e.g. for 2024 [1]:

Saudi Arabia, £14bn United States of America, £8.3bn France, £5.2bn Qatar, £3.5bn Italy, £2.8bn Oman, £2.5bn Turkey, £2.3bn India, £2.3bn Norway, £2.2bn United Arab Emirates, £1.7bn

and there are also arms Israel for about £0.572bn; and the arming of Ukraine, a cooperation with both the US and European powers, as part of NATO's struggle against Russia.

The UK also sends troops as part of US imperial interventions, e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There are also UK-dominated or UK-only interventions abroad, but mostly if we go a few decades back [2].

[1] : https://www.thenational.scot/news/24272310.uk-arms-exports--...

[2] : https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uks-83-military-intervent...

[RobotToaster]

Defending those launching illegal strikes is still offensive, in both meanings of the term.

[_djo_]

The UK was defending its allies who had not launched illegal strikes, but were themselves attacked by Iran in contravention of international law.

[anonymousDan]

I can't tell if your first sentence is a joke or not...

[tardedmeme]

> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability

If Iran struck all of the UK's missile factories and military bases, would it be considered a defensive or offensive action?

[flumpcakes]

Context matters. Did the UK start a war with Iran? Or did the UK decide to hit surrounding countries (France, Norway, Netherlands, etc.) to destabilise the region and target an Iranian airbase in Spain?

I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that appreciate UK's help in intercepting missiles.

I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that don't appreciate the US starting a war of choice.

[pbiggar]

Defensive missions? Was the UK under attack?

[flumpcakes]

The UK has allies in the region. Kuwait was bombed just yesterday. And a UK airbase was targeted.

Are you arguing that the entire world should never provide aid to other countries? Surely you're just calling for imperialist powers to gobble up the planet piece by piece.

[subscribed]

I guess schoolgirls were naughty and saying bad words about the UK, hence arming the American planes with bombs to use on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

[holoduke]

You are quite the hypocrite to call the UK not a imperialistic country. They are probably the greatest of them all. They have far more blood on their hands in foreign interventions than Russia and China combined. In fact they are still occupied with abuse and destruction throughout the world. You are naive and victim of propoganda for not seeing this.

[throawayonthe]

war is peace etc etc

[Npovview]

"Department of War" was renamed as "Department of Defense" because Edward Bernays (the greatest propagandist who ever lived) said so.

[enoint]

Maybe not directly. In 1947, it became the Department of the Army, and in 1949 the Department of Defense. Bernays was working on Engineering of Consent at the time, and applied psychoanalysis was very subtle compared to simple Orwellian name changes. For example, Bernays wanted to get women to smoke cigarettes.

[coldtea]

>The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs

It has centuries of exactly that at a global scale, and continued post-war neo-colonial land grabbing and pressuring, plus eager participation in all the imperialist games of its larger brother.

I mean, just mentioning "Tony Blair" is enough...

[happymellon]

20 years since he was in power...

[coldtea]

Also 20 years since he set the tone every later guy kept making the same or worse...

Not to mention he was never punished even for blatant violations, has been trusted with positions of power and influence since, and is making a public political comeback in 2026 too.

[foldr]

What land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation. The UK currently has fewer military personnel in Iraq than it has in, say, Germany. And Britain doesn’t control the Iraqi government.

[coldtea]

>What land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation.

Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie.

That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset.

[foldr]

My post wasn’t defending the Iraq war. It was just pointing out that the war was not a land grab. Iraq is not now a part of the UK or US (in contrast to the situation with Russia and Crimea, for example).

[roenxi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...

For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports.

[dgroshev]

Saying that it's the invasions that created civil wars and suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq is just exceptionally ignorant. Here's a taster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Ba%27athist_Ir...

For all their failures, the allies never bombed cities with nerve agents.

[ZeroGravitas]

Your page says:

> Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War

Which links to a page about the war:

> Iraq was aided by [...] the United States, the United Kingdom,

> After years of military and economic losses, decreasing morale, intensifying Iran–U.S. relations, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598.

So they basically did.

[specproc]

I think something Brits don't fully understand is the extent of our vassalage under the US.

We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.

[foldr]

Ok, but you can say the same for the US. It also has vastly more troops in Germany than Iraq, and it also does not control the Iraqi government. And the less said about Afghanistan the better. So where is the land grab?

[specproc]

One does not need to dictate every item of policy to control a country, one just needs to ensure that there's alignment on strategic issues. I think this was America's key point of learning when it took over the reins of the European empires after WW2.

In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.

The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.

Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.

[keybored]

They still own Falkland Islands.

[flumpcakes]

Who "owned" it before? There were no people on that land before it was settled.

[keybored]

I don’t know terribly much about it. Wikipedia says that the British Government decided to colonize it in 1840.

Why did British people decide to move from the Northern Hemisphere to this island? Because the climate looked similar?

And yes, here is a dispute between a historically imperialist versus a settler state. It’s weird.

[tempfile]

"war industry" is still very charitable! If you have any standards that distinguish a war from indiscriminate killing, they probably violate those standards in a large proportion of their business.

[philipallstar]

What informs your "probably"?

[tempfile]

When I said "If you have standards" I did not specify what those standards are. So I said "probably", because I have to guess you have similar standards to me. If you do, then you can drop the "probably".

As the other commenter correctly guesses, you only have to open the news to find examples. Iran, Palestine, Iraq (way back when). Most "wars" are not really wars these days, they're just exercises in western aggression.

[philipallstar]

Okay - I see. I thought it was a qualifier of "in a large proportion of their business".

In that case - why do you think it's "in a large proportion of their business"?