Whisper it quietly in the Lobby, but panic is setting in. Not in Tehran. In Whitehall. Our diplomats are staring at their secure phones, willing them to ring. They want clarity from Washington. They are not getting it.
The trigger? A string of conflicting signals from the Trump administration. One minute, the President tweets about 'obliteration.' The next, his Defence Secretary talks de-escalation. Then, a leaked memo suggests the Pentagon is spooked by its own commander-in-chief. You can almost hear the grinding of gears inside Downing Street.
Sources in the Foreign Office tell me the mood is grim. Our intelligence sharing, usually seamless, has hit a snag. 'We are getting two different sets of readouts,' one official confided. 'One from State, one from the White House. They don't match.' That is a problem when you are trying to calibrate your own response to a potential regional conflagration.
The British position is clear: avoid a war. But the fear is that Washington is no longer steering the ship. That the erratic nature of decision-making has given the initiative to hardliners in Tehran, or worse, to accident. A single misidentified drone, a trigger-happy patrol boat commander, and we are in the middle of a crisis that no one planned.
I am told the Prime Minister's phone has been hot. Not to Trump. To other European leaders. They are all asking the same question: 'Has he lost control?' The answer, from Berlin, Paris, and even some in the US Congress, is a worried shrug.
What is the endgame here? No one in London can tell you. The Cabinet is restless. Backbenchers are drafting letters. The usual suspects are sharpening their knives. Meanwhile, the British public is oblivious, watching the cricket scores. But the people who matter know: something is very wrong.
Stay tuned. This story is breaking fast.
