Of all the inane – not to say stupid – comments by Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, his remark about US and Israeli action against Iran must be at the top. ‘This is not our war,’ he said. ‘We will not be drawn into a wider war.’ Andy Burnham made the same mistake when he took office and said we had no place involving ourselves in a war with Iran.

The problem is that while we might not want to be involved in a war with Iran, Iran is very much involved in a war with us – and regularly demonstrates the extent of its hostility. We might choose to ‘hear no evil, see no evil’. But that doesn’t mean the evil isn’t real.

While we might not want to be involved in a war with Iran, Iran is very much involved in a war with us – and regularly demonstrates the extent of its hostility

This weekend, for example, it emerged that Iranian hackers shut down a power plant for four days – the first time Iranian hackers have succeeded in such an attack. According to reports, the attack on the British power plant coincided with similar cyber attacks on US water plants.

The attack is said not to have had a significant impact on the UK’s power supply or energy generation but is, rather, being treated by the security services as a warning shot by the Iranians designed to provoke fear over their capabilities should they choose to escalate such action.

As has been well reported, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are engaged constantly in attacks on infrastructure, government bodies and businesses. The NHS, schools and the likes of M&S and Jaguar Land Rover have all been hit.

But while all arms of government are well aware of this threat and work non-stop to counter it, political debate is more rooted in a non-existent Shangri-La than the reality of the ongoing, live and very real threat – not least from Iran.

The Tehran regime is known to have increased cyber-attacks on the West in recent months. The Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, which oversees spying agencies, has reported that cyber warfare is a ‘significant area of asymmetric strength’ for Iran which has thousands of hackers focused on such capabilities and spends tens of millions of dollars on it. But while this latest cyber-attack is deeply concerning, the picture is far worse when the reality of Iran’s espionage and interference in the UK is grasped. At the most basic level it pays criminals – both in gangs and as individuals – to stalk, plot against and attack regime dissidents as well as Jewish targets.

Last month George Stana and Nandito Badea were jailed for 12 and eight years for the stabbing in March 2024 of Iran International presenter Pouria Zeraati outside his home in Wimbledon. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said the evidence ‘overwhelmingly supported the conclusion that the attack was carried out on behalf of the Iranian state’. The CPS said the two were ‘recruited, funded, and directed to carry out violence’.

In March, a dual Iranian-British national and an Iranian were charged under the National Security Act with hostile surveillance for Iran. One was alleged to have directed the other after a visit to Tehran to reconnoitre a series of Israeli and Jewish targets: the Israeli embassy and consulate, Bevis Marks synagogue, a Jewish community centre and the offices of the Community Security Trust. Both deny the charges.

Last May, three Iranian nationals resident in London were charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service and with surveillance intended to enable serious violence against Iran International staff, between August 2024 and February 2025. The three men have pleaded not guilty.

Last October, Sir Ken McCallum, MI5 director general, said the service had responded to over 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the previous year, and that Iran routinely uses criminal proxies. The previous July the Intelligence and Security Committee reported ‘at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022’. Iran, it said, targets the UK partly because Tehran regards Britain as ‘a particularly malevolent opponent of the Islamic Republic’. A counter-terrorism operation last summer saw several Iranians arrested over an alleged plot against the Israeli embassy in London.

These are just a sample of many examples, the latest of which saw sanctions placed on the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right (IMCR), which claimed responsibility for seven attacks at UK locations, including the anti-Semitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green in March.

On and on it goes. This isn’t even a shadow war – it’s a war in which Iran is fixated on attacking Britain and British citizens, while we refuse to accept there is any war even taking place.

That’s before we even start to consider the role of China and its support for Iran. Reports this week suggest China has provided the technology used by Iran for its cyber-attacks. At least we recognise the malign threat posed by Iran, even if we refuse to recognise reality and say it is at war with us. Yet we regularly refuse to correctly describe Chinese actions against us – and look instead to the supposed benefits of growth from economic cooperation.

It is a kind of wilful mass political delusion, in which pretending something isn’t happening means it isn’t happening.  And it is madness.