The US/Israeli ‘Epic Fury’ attacks on Iran shook the world and shook this family. The Iranian response brought it all painfully close to us.
Our daughter Clemmie and her husband Brian live and work in Saudi Arabia. The UK Embassy has been great, she says. As Iran hit US assets across the Gulf, they included Riyadh, where they live.
Clem is an education entrepreneur. She was previously executive head of the award-winning Beech Hall School in Riyadh, an international establishment specialising in SEND pupils. She is now working with partners across the region to set up more such schools.
Thanks to FaceTime and social media, we’ve all kept in touch and know she is safe and confident in the Saudi defences and general security. She sent one brilliant photo of her squatting behind sandbags with her beloved rescue dog, Crumb.
Our grandchildren, her nephews, sent messages offering support and love. Work goes on. This morning, she had a meeting at the Education Ministry with many senior Saudis in attendance. She found it useful and reassuring.
She has a huge network of friends in Dubai, Oman, etc., and worries about them. Israel’s incursion into Lebanon reminded me of 1993, when they did the same, and I was sent out. I flew to Damascus and drove to Beirut across the Beqaa Valley. On arrival, I went to a chemist for painkillers, having pulled my back.
An explosion nearby knocked me off my feet. Our hotel’s walls were covered in black-and-white photos from the old days when Beirut was the Riviera of the region. How sadly things have changed. Wealthy Lebanese often flee to Cyprus at such times.
I also remembered going to Cyprus on a family holiday and to cover the anniversary of the Turkish invasion when Mike Nicholson did a piece to camera, and swarms of Turkish parachutists landed behind him, one of the iconic bits of reporting that he was so good at. Iran also hit Cyprus and the UK air base there, RAF Akrotiri.
We promised to send a gunboat, but it seemed to take forever before HMS Dragon finally left Portsmouth. The Americans said ‘Epic Fury’ was bigger than ‘Shock and Awe’ at the outset of the second Gulf War, which I remember so well, having covered the first Gulf War live from Saudi Arabia for several months.
Starmer doesn’t think the US/Israeli act is legal, but attacking a sovereign base on a UK protectorate is certainly illegal. We can and should do more.
The Tories said he was more interested in protecting his own position than our interests. The US and Israelis sank the Iranian Navy, including the frigate IRIS Dena, in international waters. The less-than-impressive US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, claimed it was the first time since the Second World War that a submarine had sunk a warship in combat.
Alastair Stewart: The Iranian response this week has been painfully close to home. It has shaken this family
|GB/Alastair Stewart
I am very worried about what else he was ignorant about, remembering vividly when HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine Belgrano and the row it provoked, not least Diana Gould, an English schoolteacher, confronting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on BBC radio.
Also, this week, Rachel Reeves made her Spring Statement on the state of the UK economy, slower growth, and higher unemployment. “Is that it?” asked Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride.
In response, it was indeed a dull and gloomy affair. A Labour MP’s husband was arrested and accused of spying for China. Keir Starmer claimed Katie Lam, Conservative MP for Weald of Kent, would defect to Reform UK.
The Greens won the Denton by-election, Reform came second, and the Tories third.
It was shocking, but not as much as an earthquake as Bill Pitt winning Croydon North West in 1987, one of many of whom one can ask: where are they now?
Many are asking where Iran’s nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles are or were. Will Trump need a dodgy dossier, and is it Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction all over again? All very opaque and worrying. World events keep my mind sharp, and dementia doesn’t deny me my vivid memories.