‘T.E. Lawrence’s vision of a "Commonwealth of free peoples in the Near East" was a proposal for a post-World War I Middle East where Arab nations, previously under Ottoman rule, would gain independence and form a loose, self-governing confederation closely aligned with, but not directly ruled by, the British Empire.’
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As you can imagine, most of the BBC's Question Time programme last Thursday was taken up with discussion about the war in the Middle East, for which the audience showed very little public support. However, the final comment from the panel was a particularly interesting reaction from author George Monbiot to a question about Trump’s disdainful description of Sir Keir Starmer as ‘no Churchill’.
George Monbiot took the audience back to 1953 when Churchill was Prime Minister, and to his part in bringing about the downfall of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the then very popular leader of Iran. There’s a very detailed account of this 1953 Iranian coup d’état in Wikipedia, describing how the United Kingdom and the United States were the prime movers in his downfall, and how this led to the very authoritarian rule by the Shah. This was itself followed by the 1979 revolution, bringing about the also very authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic.
Western democracies have a long and not very honourable record of bringing about regime change in the Middle East, motivated primarily by their interest in the region's vast oil wealth. But the past one hundred years of woe was itself preceded by centuries of conflict: from the Crusades, the Venetian diversion of those crusaders which led to the sacking of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire (which did not quite extend into Iran) and its fall, in which Lawrence of Arabia was so closely involved, as our opening quotation makes clear.
It is interesting to note that Lawrence declined the knighthood offered to him by George V. He was disappointed that Britain failed to honour his promise to Sheikh Faisal, that the Arabs would have their own state. This plan was vetoed by the Sykes—Picot accord in 1916, which split Ottoman Empire territory between Britain and France.
Donald Trump has now made at least two very public criticisms of Keir Starmer and the United Kingdom, and there's been quite a bit of political comment about lessons learned from the Iraq war over twenty years ago. That conflict was also spurred on by Israel's fears over potential acquisition of nuclear weapons, at that time by Iraq. The United States’ and the United Kingdom’s involvement almost certainly resulted from an Israeli ultimatum, just as some are now suggesting was the case with the current conflict.
But there appears to be very little recognition of the complicity of the West, and particularly the United Kingdom, in the chronic repetition of regime change and violence in the Middle East, going back over the past millennium, and particularly over the past century: the latter being increasingly driven by the desire to get access to Middle Eastern oil wealth.
Because we have been such a key part of this tragic story for so long, we really ought to be as actively involved as we can be in securing a stable, peaceful outcome. It is, after all, our Christian heritage which contains that most direct and challenging instruction, to ‘love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you’, but yet again at the root of the current conflict lie differences of faith: Christian; Judaism; and the two interpretations of Islam — Shiite and Sunni.
On 23rd June 2025 we called for a ‘Global Assembly for Faith’ which could provide the forum for that stable and peaceful outcome: it is now more urgent than ever.
In that context, it's very important to be aware and mindful of the historical context which has brought us to this point: that's why it was so good to hear George Monbiot bringing it to the audience’s attention in last week's Question Time. Perhaps the BBC would consider producing a documentary charting the long-term perspective of these Middle Eastern trials and tribulations.
Of course, the story could reach back much further than the past one thousand years. All the above-mentioned faiths are ‘Abrahamic’: in other words, they go right back to their founding human father Abraham and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael. The biblical story of Exodus charts the journey of the Jewish people from Egypt to what is current-day Israel, embodying the potentially-misunderstood divine commitment supposedly given to Moses on Mount Nebo.
Following the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, Islam emerged from the Arabic descendants of Abraham early in the 7th century AD, and that set the scene for centuries of interaction with Europe: sometimes constructive, but more often destructive. One key stage in this was the sacking of Constantinople in 1202 AD, in which the Venetians played such a critical part: as we explained on 24th December 2018.
The United States has therefore been a latecomer to this long history, but it is certainly making up for it now by driving the current chaos.
There has never been a time when it is more important to reach for stability and peace, taking full account of British complicity over all this time; and the establishment of a Global Assembly for Faith would be a very good start.
It's hard to imagine the extent of human, material and economic destruction which has been brought about by the current conflict, and we must just hope that the world's other two major powers — China and Russia — stay well out of it. With the sheer existential threat posed by today's weaponry, we have to bring these centuries — indeed, millennia — of fighting to a close.
Perhaps we should re-visit T.E. Lawrence's vision for a ‘Commonwealth of free peoples in the Near East’?
Gavin Oldham OBE
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