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2 hours ago
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The UK “took far too long” to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran, Donald Trump has said.
The US president added that he was “very disappointed” in Keir Starmer over the British government’s deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as a means to preserve the status of the UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, part of the Indian Ocean archipegalo.
The Chagos deal, which Trump initially supported before changing his mind, was a “very woke thing”, the US president argued.
While Starmer and his ministers did not openly oppose Saturday’s initial wave of US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, they did not allow US forces to use Diego Garcia or any UK airbases because of doubts about the legality of the strikes.
On Sunday evening, however, Starmer said this position had changed given that Iran had launched a wave of retaliatory missile and drone attacks on a range of targets in the Middle East, with one hitting a UK airbase in Cyprus.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Trump said Starmer was too slow to change his mind, adding: “It took far too much time. Far too much time.
“That’s probably never happened between our countries before. It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
The UK should have immediately allowed Diego Garcia to be used, Trump added, because Iran was responsible for killing a “lot of people from your country”.
“[There are] people without arms and legs and faces that have been blown up. Iran is 95% of those. Those horrible events were caused by Iran,” the president said, without elaborating on what he meant.
The UK government bill to formalise the deal with Mauritius is paused at its final stage in parliament after Trump changed his mind. Starmer has said that the plan will not go ahead without US agreement.
While Trump had previously criticised the plan, which is backed by the US state department, early in February he had described it as the “best” deal Starmer could make in the circumstances.
But in a change of heart later that month, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
“All of a sudden [Mauritius] was claiming ownership,” Trump told the British newspaper. “He should have fought it out and owned it or [made them] take it, if you want to know the truth. But no, we were very disappointed in Keir.”
He added: “It would have been much better on the legal front if he just kept the ownership of the land and not given it to people that weren’t the rightful owners.”
On the strikes against Iran, Trump said the operation was “well ahead of schedule”, adding: “We always anticipated four weeks. We also anticipated two to three weeks to take out some of the leadership, but we’ve taken out all of it in one day. So that was well ahead of schedule. We always viewed it as a four-week operation.”
Trump has been vague about what the goals of the military strikes are, saying that the aim is for the Iranian people to rise up, but also talking about the idea of holding talks with successors to Khamenei.
