Liz Truss says UK is now too weak (Image: Getty)
Liz Truss today claimed the West had become “weak” in the face of aggression from authoritarian states and needed to ramp up defence spending and adopt a Reagan-style policy of “peace through strength.”
The former Prime Minister was speaking at a conference hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran where she told delegates decades of appeasement by both politicians and bureaucrats in Britain, the US and EU had emboldened the Iranian dictatorship, which was now on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon.
She called China, North Korea, and Iran the “Axis of Aggression” and warned that if the West did not take tough decisive action now it would be facing a world where Iran was nuclear-armed.
She said: “How did we get here? It wasn’t just the malign activities of the mullahs, it wasn’t just the belligerence of China and their threats to Taiwan, or the kleptocracy of , it is because in the West we are weak.
“We failed to spend enough on our defences. Instead of taking action against authoritarian regimes, instead of defending freedom and democracy, too many in the West benefited from cheap oil and cheap gas.
“And it wasn’t just the politicians like Biden and Macron, it was the bureaucrats who just didn’t want the fight.
“But what we know from history is that if you don’t deal with an aggressor early you end up paying later.”
She said the West needed to adopt the Cold War style “peace through strength” approach championed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
Truss was in Paris addressing members of the NCRI, a pro-democracy resistance movement dedicated to overthrowing the Ayatollah and Iranian theocracy.
Several former military commanders from the Us and prominent European politicians attended the high profile cross-Atlantic conference. One of the speakers was General Keith Kellogg, a former Acting National Security Advisor to the President during the first Trump administration who has been picked by the incoming US President and his special envoy on and .
The 49-year-old ex-Tory MP and Prime Minister, who is currently threatening to sue for his repeated claims she “crashed the economy”, claimed the best way to destabilise Iran and hasten the end of the Iranian despots was for the west to source its own oil and gas.
She said: “I am a supporter of the mantra ‘drill baby drill’. It is time we stopped relying on oil and gas from despotic regimes.
“That is the biggest thing which will kill off Iran’s economy and enable change in Iran.”
Mirroring other speakers at the conference Truss backed incoming President ’s policy of “maximum pressure” which was first imposed after he scrapped the Obama-negotiated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) also known as the Iran deal.
The JCPOA agreement, finalized in Vienna on 14 July 2015, between Iran, The United States, China, France, , the United Kingdom, and Germany, was supposed to keep Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in check with a series of cash-based incentives.
But it soon became clear Iran had no intention of sticking to either the letter or spirit of the JCPOA and Trump scrapped it in 2018 in favour of a “maximum pressure” policy of tough sanctions applied to Iran and all countries and companies doing business with Iran. Tehran was effectively cut off from the international financial system.
Her “maximum pressure” position was backed by another keynote speaker retired US 4-star General James Jones who said: “In the US right now people are saying it’s ‘Trump time’ – a time that will not be good for the regime in Iran.”
The NCRI is led by Iranian opposition leader, Maryam Rajavi. She shared Ms Truss’s views on the West’s historic appeasement and said: “The clerical regime is at impasse in every way. Therefore, it is trying to convince Western governments to continue their policy of appeasement.
“Unfortunately, over the past three decades, when the regime was on the brink, Western governments sided with the mullahs.
“It is time for Western governments to abandon past policies and stand with the Iranian people this time.”
The American generals called for support of Iranian opposition and the “10-point plan” which is the cornerstone of Maryam Rajavi’s plan for a future democratic Iran. Gen Kellogg said: “For the United States, a policy of maximum pressure must be reinstated, and it must be reinstated with the help of the rest of the globe, and that includes standing with the Iranian people and their aspirations for democracy…The 10 point plan for the future of Iran ensures a clear transitional path to a more friendly, stable, non-belligerent, and a non-nuclear Iran.”