Prime Minister Keir Starmer would refuse to help the US if it attacked Iran.
According to sources in The Times, Donald Trump has requested that the United States be allowed to use two British air bases - one in southern England and one on the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - for aircraft that would participate in possible attacks on Iran.
According to the newspaper, Starmer reportedly informed Trump that it would violate both international law and a previous agreement between the US and the UK, which states the bases may be used only in the event of an attack on a third country approved in advance by both governments.
The American attack plan includes the use of the two British bases, despite Britain having refused to assist the United States in attacks last summer, which targeted Iran's nuclear facilities.
Starmer's refusal, delivered in a phone call on Tuesday, is said, according to The Times, to be the direct reason Trump criticized Britain's Chagos Islands settlement the following day on Truth Social. He then went directly against his own Foreign Office, which had only hours earlier supported the agreement.
The background is that Starmer signed an agreement last year in which sovereignty over the Chagos Islands was handed over to Mauritius. In return, the area around the Diego Garcia airbase is leased to the UK for at least 99 years.
But that's not enough, Trump wrote on Wednesday, urging the British to stand up to all "political correctness." He also claimed that it could be crucial for the United States to be able to use Diego Garcia in attacks against Iran.
