Donald Trump unleashed a new attack on Sir Keir Starmer as his proposal for a multi-national naval force to re-open the Strait of Hormuz was struggling to gain momentum.
Early on Monday, the Prime Minister said Britain would “not be drawn into the wider war” as he and other world leaders refused to jump to Trump’s demand for a fleet of warships to unblock the key waterway.
The UK, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan and Greece were among countries who at least initially declined to sign up to the US president’s plan to get commercial ships. with naval escorts, moving again through the strait.
As his plan appeared to be floundering Trump reserved some of his strongest criticism for Sir Keir and the UK’s stance.
“I was very surprised with the United Kingdom because the United Kingdom two weeks ago I said ‘why don’t you send some ships over’ and he really did not want to do it,” the president said.
“I said ‘you don’t want to do it, we’ve been with you, you are our oldest ally, and we spend a lot of money on Nato..to protect you’.”
He stressed that the US had worked with the UK on Ukraine, adding: “Then they tell us that we have a mine ship around, and they don’t want to do it.
“It’s terrible.
“I was very surprised. I told him, we requested two aircraft carriers which they had and he did not really want to do it.”
He then also criticised Sir Keir over his leadership style.
“The Prime Minister of the UK yesterday told me ‘I’m meeting with my team to make a determination’,” Trump said, revealing more details of their talks by phone.
“I said ‘you don’t need to meet up with the team, you are the Prime Minister, you can make your own..why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you are going to send some mine sweepers’.”
Trump said that “maybe” the UK would join the proposed naval force, while on French president Emmanuel Macron backing it, he added: “I think he’s going to help.”
Earlier, speaking in Downing Street, Sir Keir distanced himself again from the US president’s offensive military action against Tehran.
He stressed: "While taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war.”
He added that the UK was working with other countries, including in Europe, to develop a "viable, collective plan" to re-open the strait.
“We want to make sure that that involves as many partners as possible, particularly talking to European partners, inevitably talking to Gulf partners, and to the US because we need a credible, viable plan,” he explained.
He emphasised it would not be a Nato mission, adding: “This is to say the least not easy, it is not straightforward therefore we have to make sure that we have got that credible plan in place.”
The Government had yet to make decisions on what the UK would contribute to the efforts to re-open the strait, he added, but stressed the need for this to happen to address the growing oil crisis.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Monday flatly rejected Trump’s latest plea for military support in the war.
“This is not our war, we have not started it,” he said.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said his country was involved in defensive naval missions in the Red Sea “but I don’t see any missions that can be extended to Hormuz”.
Iran has effectively closed the key strait, through which a fifth of global oil supplies flow, by targeting more than a dozen vessels since the start of the war.
Choking off use of the waterway has triggered an oil crisis, with petrol and other bills rising in Britain and other countries.
With the war now in its third week, naval experts are warning that using navy ships to escort oil tankers through the narrow strait would be fraught with danger given the risks from Iranian drone attacks.
Trump, though, has threatened that Nato faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid as the stand-off over the Hormuz Strait deepened the Iran crisis, with oil back above $100 (£75) a barrel.
But Australia said it was not planning to send navy vessels to the Middle East to escort ships through the waterway,
Japan took a similar stance as Germany also voiced scepticism about the proposal.
Britain is considering whether to deploy mine-hunting drones but will only get involved in defensive action, having questioned whether the offensive US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran are lawful.
Asked about Trump’s Nato warning, Cabinet minister Pat McFadden described the current US presidency as “very transactional” with a “lot of rhetoric,” adding that he believed that US-UK ties would “outlast all the personalities involved”.
His comments appeared to show a growing disquiet in Whitehall at Trump’s approach to the war in which he has launched a series of scathing attacks on Sir Keir for only allowing US forces to use UK bases for defensive military operations such as targeting Iranian missile sites.
With the Iran war creating turmoil across the Middle East and shaking up global energy markets, Trump on Sunday insisted that nations relying heavily on oil from the Gulf have a responsibility to protect the strait.
“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory,” the US president said aboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington.
However, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a staunch Trump supporter, said on Monday her country, constrained by its war-renouncing constitution, has no plan to dispatch naval vessels to escort ships in the Middle East from where it gets 95% of its oil.
Australia, another key Indo-Pacific security ally to the US that also relies heavily on fuels made with Middle Eastern crude, said it will not send naval ships to assist in reopening the strait either.
Global air travel remains severely disrupted due to the Iran war which has closed or restricted key Middle Eastern hubs including Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights and stranding tens of thousands of passengers.
A drone strike on an oil depot closed Dubai International Airport for several hours on Monday before flights started to resume.
