House of Lords Committee Says UK Should Not Back US Middle-East Policy

A House of Lords committee said that the United Kingdom 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, the (BBC) reported. 
Ministers said the UK would continue to work with international partners to achieve security and prosperity. The report said that 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 program 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 recognizing Palestine as a state, to show Britain's continued attachment to the two-state solution. Last week, UK 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. 

Source: QNA