Reflexions on Britain’s Middle East diplomacy

In the latest episodes, Sir Jeremy Greenstock and Editor-in-Chief David Hearst reflect on what Britain must do to put principle back into its diplomatic relations. Greenstock discusses lessons from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, rising tensions with Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza, and the so-called Board of Peace, and asks if Britain can act independently.

The retired British diplomat questions the effectiveness of military intervention as a diplomatic tool and reassert the need for a principled UK diplomacy. Greenstock critiques President Trump’s Board of Peace, explaining why he believes 7 October was used by Prime Minister Netanyahu to pursue establishing full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

At the time of the 2023 Iraq War, Greenstock was a senior UK diplomat. He served as the UK’s permanent representative to the UN between 1998-2003, and was chair of the UN Security Council’s Counter Terrorism Committee, 2001-2003. Greenstock’s diary of events leading to and during the war was banned from publication in 2005 at the behest of then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Iraq: The Cost of War was subsequently published in 2017 by Arrow Books, a Random House-Penguin subsidiary.

During the interview Greenstock revealed that Board of Peace member Tony Blair recently asked the Palestinian Authority (PA) to replace any mention of the word ‘Palestine’ in schoolbooks with the Jewish designation of ‘Samaria’, which PA President Mahmoud Abbas refused.

Greenstock said: ‘He recently, I understand, was asked by the Board of Peace to go to Ramallah and ask to remove from the Palestinian curriculum any mention of the word Palestine if they were to be treated by the Board of Peace as capable of coming to an agreement with Israel to end the current conflict that had stemmed from 7 October onwards.’  A spokesperson for Blair denied this as ‘not true and a complete fabrication’.

The David Hearst-Jeremy Greenstock discussion in available on MME YouTube channel. Other recent podcasts include: Can Andy Burnham actually change UK politics, with Peter Oborne which includes the future of Gaza and Trump’s shifting approach to Iran; and Why the Mecca Agreement is a necessary show of force, in which Hearst argues ‘the Arab world is finally beginning to build an alternative security order’.

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