There is a particular kind of diplomatic regret that comes from making the right decision too late. Britain may be experiencing that regret in the aftermath of the Iran crisis — recognising, in retrospect, that the cost of early cooperation would have been lower than the cost of late cooperation, which carried the added weight of the preceding refusal and the public rebuke it had attracted.
The initial calculation — that withholding basing rights would satisfy domestic critics without unduly damaging the relationship with Washington — proved to be mistaken on both counts. The domestic political benefit was modest, and the damage to the relationship with Washington was significant and public.
Had Britain granted permission for American forces to use its bases from the outset — or at least before the issue became a public controversy — the story would have been very different. The diplomatic friction would have been avoided; the presidential rebuke would not have been delivered; the secretary of state’s pointed conference remarks would have been unnecessary.
Instead, Britain found itself in the worst of all worlds: having incurred the diplomatic cost of refusal, it then cooperated — but too late to receive the credit that early cooperation would have earned. The president’s dismissal of the carrier offer as no longer needed was the final punctuation mark on a sequence of events that could have been managed very differently.
The lesson — that in alliance relationships, early and unambiguous commitment is worth far more than belated and conditional cooperation — was one that Britain would carry forward from the episode.