US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Britain for not fully backing his attack on Iran, reports AFP.

“I’m not happy with the UK,” Trump said, as he said of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Britain, a steadfast ally of the United States throughout the two world wars and in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, decided not to join the assault on Iran that Trump launched with Israel on Saturday.

Starmer said that the United States was not authorised to use UK bases in Cyprus, one of which was struck by an Iranian-made drone.

“It’s taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land. There would have been much more convenient landing there, as opposed to flying many extra hours,” Trump said in apparent reference to Diego Garcia.

Trump, after a series of flip-flops, has criticized Starmer for agreeing to return the Chagos Islands, where Diego Garcia lies and whose people were expelled by Britain, to Mauritius and instead to lease the base.

“I will say the UK has been very, very uncooperative with that stupid island that they have,” said Trump, who was speaking next to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House.