The most useful thing the release of the Luxon-Peters emails on Iran has done is end an argument. For two months the question of where Christopher Luxon’s foreign policy instincts actually sat had been a guessing game. Stumbled press conferences. A curiously elastic distinction between “supporting” and “acknowledging” the US-Israeli strikes. It has felt like a PM and Government that would not say what it actually thought.
Last week’s emails settled it. They show that in the days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Prime Minister wanted New Zealand standing publicly with Washington. He was talked out of it, on the documentary record, by his Foreign Minister, by senior MFAT officials, and by his own department.
