Donald Trump has claimed King Charles agrees with him that Iran should never be allowed nuclear weapons.
Trump made the remarks at a White House state dinner on Tuesday in honour of the visiting Charles and Camilla, after the two men sat down to bilateral talks earlier that day.
As head of state, the king is above party politics and remains neutral. Trump’s comments are likely to cause some embarrassment to royal aides that the king’s views – or, at least, what Trump claims his views to be – have been made public.
The US president said in his speech at the white-tie event on Tuesday evening: “We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well. We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever, Charles agrees with me even more than I do, we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.
“They know that, and they’ve known it right now, very powerfully.”
Trump’s descriptions of opinions held by people with whom he has spoken privately – frequently relayed in social media posts and public appearances – are often found to conflict with the views expressed by the people themselves.
In the UK, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, repeatedly called for the king’s trip to the US to be cancelled before Charles left for his four-day state visit, which began on Monday. Davey told the Commons earlier this month: “President Trump is one of the most unpredictable people we have seen on the world stage and I hope he does not embarrass our monarch.”
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “The king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.”
After the bilateral meeting, when questioned by press as he left, Trump said: “It was a really good meeting. He’s a fantastic person. They’re incredible people and it’s a real honour.”
In his state dinner speech Charles appeared to suggest to the president the purpose of his state visit was to “put the ‘special’ back into our relationship” – just as Queen Elizabeth II did almost 70 years ago. Charles spoke about the ties between Britain and the US, and implied it mirrored events in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez crisis, when Elizabeth toured the US to help repair relations.
Britain was left humiliated when the US refused to support its campaign with France to regain control of the Suez canal from Egypt, and the brief conflict marked the end of the UK’s role as a global military power.
Charles told the dinner guests, who included the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and the golfer Rory McIlroy: “And yes, we have had our moments of difficulty, even in more recent history. When my mother visited in 1957, not the least of her tasks was to help put the ‘special’ back into our relationship after a crisis in the Middle East.”
Some of the guests laughed when the king said: “Nearly 70 years on, it is hard to imagine anything like that happening today … ”
Charles’s most diplomatically sensitive state visit to date comes amid a backdrop of criticism levelled by Trump at Keir Starmer over the war in Iran.
Relations between the two men have been fractious, with the president calling the UK’s approach to the Iran war “terrible” and repeatedly lashing out at Starmer – at one point describing him as “no Winston Churchill”.
A ceremonial welcome was staged for Charles and Camilla on the White House’s south lawn on Tuesday, and Trump praised the “special relationship” between the US and the UK, telling the king: “we hope it will always remain that way” and declaring: “Americans have had no closer friends than the British.”
Later that day the king made a historic address to Congress on Capitol Hill – only the second British monarch to do so after Elizabeth II in 1991.
In his speech, Charles made no direct mention of the Iran war, but referred to Trump’s criticism of Nato, and highlighted the importance of continued US help for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and the dangers of isolationism.
On Wednesday, Charles and Camilla will mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, by laying flowers at one of the memorial pools.