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The unpredictability of Donald Trump's approach to the Middle East means the UK should no longer support US foreign policy in the region, peers have said.

A House of Lords committee concluded the UK could no longer assume the US would "set the tone" for the West's relationship with the Middle East.

The International Relations Committee spent six months working on its report.

Ministers said the UK would continue to work with international partners to achieve security and prosperity.
The report said the Trump administration had "the potential to destabilise further the region".




"The mercurial and unpredictable nature of policy-making by President Trump has made it challenging for the UK government to influence US foreign policy so far, a challenge that is not likely to ease," it said.

The peers point particularly to the US president's hostility to the deal curbing Iran's nuclear programme and his ambivalence to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The peers said the UK must distance itself from the US and fundamentally reshape its policy.

They said the UK should do more to support the Iran nuclear deal and consider recognising Palestine as a state, to show Britain's continued attachment to the two-state solution.

The committee, led by Conservative former Foreign Office minister Lord Howell of Guildford, said British "confusion and disarray" over Syria reflected contradictions in international policy on President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"The objective of displacing Assad, as a prerequisite of any settlement, with the current means and policy, has proved unachievable," they said.

"Despite the chemical attack and the recent escalation of military conflict Assad, with Russian support, remains in power.

"There are no good options available in Syria but the recent chemical attack, the urgency of the humanitarian crisis, with the potential to destabilise the EU and countries of the Middle East with refugees, requires the UK, and international community, to redouble its efforts to achieve a negotiated solution."
The committee also called for the government to take a tougher line with Saudi Arabia over its actions in Yemen, including the possibility of suspending some arms exports as a last resort.

"We recognise the importance of arms sales to the UK economy and the Gulf. Arms sales, however, must take place with regard for international obligations," the report said.

"The government must demonstrate that its private diplomacy is working. If not, it should speak out clearly at the UN, within the Human Rights Council, condemning violations, intentional or not, in clear terms."

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale described the committee's report as uncompromising.

Last week, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would be unable to say "no" if the US asked for military support in an airstrike on Syrian government targets.

Why would they want to "drop nuclear bombs on us"?

Are you suggesting that the USA is so ineffective that it would allow disagreement between the two nations to lead to military hostility? It seems more likely to me that NK is developing its weapons systems to prevent us from dropping bombs on them. That's the nuclear defense posture which the rest of the nuclear powers uphold. Why not develop a relationship with NK which forswears hostility and seeks to make good economic relations between NK and the USA indispensable for the NK economy? Our current policy just underscores and legitimates the paranoia of the regime.

Your argument is ridiculous and hysterical. NK will only use nuclear weapons against the US if under the threat of attack. You'd rather pretend otherwise to justify another unwarranted military adventure.

It's not NK nukes that should worry you it's Chinese ones. If China deems itself under threat they may decide to remove that threat.

NK's missile system is antiquated while America's is state of the art.

That would be true if their leader were mentally stable. He is not.

That would be true if their leader were mentally stable. He is not.

North Korea has been aggressively pursuing a program of increasing the range of its missiles, and if it continues to do this, within a few years, it will probably have missiles that can reach the US

The Chinese, although they often behave badly, are sane and pursue risk averse policies. I certainly don't believe that they will launch a nuclear attack against anyone out of paranoia.

Trump’s Volatility in Asia Distresses a Longtime U.S. Ally: Australia

This is exactly right
The aim has become very simple for House Republicans stumbling closer to passing a bill to revise the Affordable Care Act: just get it off their plates and over to the Senate.

In the messy effort to rally their often unruly party around a measure to replace big parts of President Barack Obama’s health-care law, House leaders have been forced to leave other objectives by the wayside and focus on one simple, political goal: pass a bill they can say repeals Obamacare — even if it has no hope of survival in the Senate — to shield their members in next year’s elections.

You don't seem to be interested in anything other than paranoid hysteria to justify yet another illegal war.

North Korea already has missiles that can hit the US. They probably had them 20 years ago. Missiles can be launched from sea hundreds of miles off the coast of the US.