EU leaders are concerned that Theresa May could soften UK’s opposition to settlements as she seeks closer ties with Donald Trump

A call by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for tougher action against Iran and in defence of his West Bank settlement programme during a visit to Downing Street on Monday is likely to highlight the growing tensions between a British foreign policy orientated to Washington and Theresa May’s need to retain good relations with the European Union before Brexit.

European leaders at their Malta summit on Friday voiced fears that Trump is content to see the break-up of the EU and are wary that May, in search of post-Brexit allies, will be tempted to side with Trump and Netanyahu either by softening UK opposition to the settlements or even by calling for the Iranian nuclear deal signed in July 2015 to be revisited.

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The EU’s jumpiness over British intentions to Israel may be overblown, but it has led to Anglo-French tensions with claims that Britain has undertaken an unprincipled volte face in order to ingratiate itself with Trump’s inner circle.

Certainly UK policy on the Middle East has been through some strange twists and turns, directed by Downing Street.

In the twilight of the Obama administration, knowing that Trump was set to take power with a different approach to Israel, Britain actively crafted resolution 2334 at the United Nations on 23 December condemning illegal Israeli settlements and going closer than before to recognising a Palestinian state. It called for differential treatment of Israel within the pre-1967 borders, calling on states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”, something that could potentially pave the way for future sanctions, including boycotts.

The US for the first time did not veto a resolution against Israel.

The blowback on the British and, to a lesser extent, the Americans was immediate; within days, the UK seemed to revise its tone. May criticised John Kerry, the then US secretary of state, for condemning Israel’s government as the most rightwing in its history.

Britain refused to send an official delegation to a long arranged one-day Middle East peace conference organised by the French government in Paris. More than 30 foreign ministers and representatives from 70 countries dutifully attended on Sunday 15 January, but the UK sent no minister or even its ambassador to France, declaring its relatively low-level functionaries were only present as observers.

Even through the closing declaration from the Paris conference was significantly more pro-Israeli than the original leaked draft, the UK publicly disassociated itself with it in what some French diplomats regarded as an undignified and unprincipled effort to ingratiate the UK with the US. The Foreign Office declared: “There are risks therefore that this conference hardens positions at a time when we need to be encouraging the conditions for peace.”

Two further statements, one at the EU foreign affairscouncil the following day, supporting the outcome of the Paris conference, and another at the UN the day after that, were opposed by the British in a further mark of disapproval.

The Paris conference was unlikely to have achieved much but, at a minimum, was a well-intentioned effort to keep the goal of a two-state solution as the declared aim of the international community.

The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, defended the government’s actions, saying the French conference was a little like Hamlet without the Prince since the Israelis had declined to attend. Speaking to the Lords international relations committee, he referred to event witheringly. He said: “The subsequent series of diplomatic ventures seem to me to be aimed not so much at producing a resolution or solving the problems of the Middle East peace process, but rather at domestic political posturing in the run-up to various elections.”

He added that he had genuine hope Trump’s team could bring peace.

There is little diplomatic downside in being rude to the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, since he is a member of a socialist government certain to be thrown from office this spring and he will retire from politics.

However, the French are quietly seething at Britain’s behaviour and privately admit such sabotage is hardly going to engender French flexibility over Brexit.

May may want to offer herself as the transatlantic bridge to the White House, but the episode could instead make the EU more determined to conduct its own diplomatic relations with the US, rather than seek the mediation of an unreliable interlocutor.

At the same time, it is hard to discern the extent to which the British manoeuvres represented a strategic change in UK policy, rather than an attempt to get close to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the man appointed to achieve Middle East peace.

The Foreign Office, for instance, has issued three statements in the past fortnight saying it opposed extra settlement building on the West Bank, adding they were not conducive to peace and their construction must stop.

May presumably will reiterate this view at her meeting on Monday. After all, since Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, Netanyahu has announced the approval of more than 6,000 housing units in the occupied Palestinian territories, in both East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the first new settlement since the 1990s.

An emboldened Netanyahu declared during Trump’s first week in office that the early settlement approvals were just a “taste” of what is to come. “We are going to be doing many things differently from now on,” he said.

The Trump administration finally responded on Friday with a statement condemning new settlements, but remaining opaque about the existing ones or their expansion within existing borders.

It read: “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal [peace].”

Israel took this as a softening of the US position, even though the Trump team emphasised it wanted to discuss the issue with Netanyahu on his visit to Trump later this month.

Netanyahu will use his meeting with May to try to persuade her that settlements are not the primary obstacle to peace and even to persuade her not to criticise existing settlements.

But, above all else, he will want to create a new common ground between the UK, Israel and Trump over hostility to Iran.

May has already noticeably hardened her rhetoric on Iran in a speech in Philadelphia that warned of its malign influence and aggressive efforts to increase its arc of power from Tehran through to the Mediterranean.

But Johnson last week described the Iran deal as one of the achivements of the Obama adminstration, adding that it was of value not only in itself, but also due to the improvement of relations with Iran.

It would be a huge step for the UK to pull away from that deal altogether. Lord Lamont, the UK trade envoy to Iran, last week urged May to be careful in her rhetoric. “We just assume that the language that we adopt will have no effect on our relationship and does not cause extreme offence in Iran,” he said.

When it comes to Middle East diplomacy, May is finding there are very few options without consequences.