Helen Clark says NZ must resist ‘slippery slope’ to involvement in Iran conflict

Monday, 2 March 2026

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark says New Zealand’s Government must make clear it will not become involved in the emerging conflict in the Middle East, as the UK finds itself participating in strikes on Iran.

She said the coalition Government appeared far more militaristic than the last National Government and she suspected if it had been in power it would have invaded Iraq alongside the US in 2003.

Clark was speaking to The Post following the sudden strike by the US and Israel against Iran over the weekend, which killed the country’s leader.

The UK has announced that it will allow the US to use British bases to strike Iran in response to Iranian counterattacks.

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• NZ calls for resumption of negotiations with Iran following US strikes

Clark said this was the “slippery slope” that New Zealand must resist.

“What one would want to hear from the New Zealand prime minister today is that New Zealand is not walking an inch down that slope,” Clark said.

She has been sharply critical of New Zealand’s response to the attack, which stopped short of either condemning the US attack or endorsing it, instead “acknowledging” that “the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appeared to go further on RNZ on Monday morning, saying New Zealand’s position was the same as Australia’s ‒ which had endorsed the strikes.

Clark said Luxon appeared to now be endorsing the strike despite her belief he would have legal advice knowing it was inconsistent with international law.

She said it was important that New Zealand stood up for international law or it would not be able to call out things like the Russian attack on Ukraine.

“If you support a unilateral strike without the self-defence excuse kicking in ‒ because there was no imminent attack from from Iran ‒ if you accept that, then where is your moral authority to call out Russia on its two invasions in Ukraine, and its intervention in Georgia back in 2008? You have no leg to stand on,” Clark said.

She agreed that the Iranian regime was “terrible” but said if the West wanted to intervene everywhere in the world with a brutal regime it would need defence spending at about 20% of GDP.

“It was a terrible regime. It has killed many thousands of its people. Sadly, it's not the only one around the world at the moment. So if Western countries are going to justify taking the law into their own hands and charging in in these circumstances, they'd better get their defence expenditure up to 10% to 20% ‒ not 5% for NATO.”

She said arguments about the fact that Iran’s regime was brutal reminded her of the campaign to invade Iraq in 2003, which as prime minister she rejected.

“We were fed the same lines ‒ that Saddam Hussein's a bad man. He kills his people. He's got weapons of mass destruction,” Clark said.

“There was no imminent threat of attack against those who attacked Iraq, and as history has shown, the deaths which flowed from that intervention were countless thousands, not only from military means, but from the terrorism, the hunger, the impoverishment that followed. Forced regime change tends not to end so well.

“If this sort of Government had been in power in 2003 New Zealand would have been joining in on the invasion of Iraq.”

Clark said early indications were not that there was an organised resistance movement ready to take over in Iran, and the downstream impacts on New Zealand and the world would be large.

“This is a war of choice in a highly volatile country in a highly volatile region, and if this goes on it will see our petrol prices soaring. Petrol feeds into the price of food, it feeds into the price of transport. It has multiple effects right through the economy.”

Asked about Luxon dismissing her comments on his morning media slots, Clark suggested that she and former foreign affairs minister Phil Goff had “considerably more experience in foreign affairs” than he did.

Luxon told RNZ he had “noted” Clark’s comments.

“I mean, she said it was a disgraceful statement. What was disgraceful was the Iranian regime and what they've been doing since 1979 so, and frankly, decades of diplomacy has not borne fruit at all.”

He said he “understood” the initial strikes and diplomacy hadn’t worked over decades.

'We think Iran has been repressing its own people. We think it's been arming proxies and terrorist organisations. We think it has been developing its ballistic and nuclear programmes and years of diplomacy hasn't actually paid any fruits.

“We understand fully why the Americans and Israelis have undertaken the independent action that they have taken to make sure Iran can't threaten people.”

He said it would be up to the US and Israel to explain the legality of their actions.