LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — King Charles III will visit the United States (US) in late April, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday, despite some calls for the trip to be cancelled or delayed amid the Iran war.

Confirmation of the monarch’s first state visit to the US comes at a rocky time for the so-called US-UK “special relationship”, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticising Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reticence over the US-Israel war against Tehran.

The trip by the king and Queen Camilla would “celebrate the historic connections and the modern bilateral relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States”, Buckingham Palace said in the statement.

It will come as the US marks its 250th anniversary of independence and will be followed by an official visit by the king to Bermuda which is a British Overseas Territory.

Washington’s envoy to Britain, Warren Stephens, warned last week it would be a “big mistake” for the US visit to be cancelled.

Trump has repeatedly railed against Starmer since the start of the war, accusing him of not doing enough to support the US.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Trump said earlier this month, after Starmer initially declined to let US warplanes fly from UK bases to strike Iran.

“I’m disappointed with Keir,” Trump has also said, slamming Starmer’s “big mistake”.

Trump also caused offence with recent remarks about UK troops’ participation in Afghanistan.

The visit will be Charles’s first trip to the US as king, after he hosted Trump for a lavish state visit last September.

The exact dates of the visit will be announced later, the palace said.

The mercurial US president has frequently expressed admiration for Britain’s royal family, which threw him a full state dinner at Windsor Castle, military parades and a flyover during last year’s visit.

It was an unprecedented second state visit for Trump, who was also hosted in 2019 by the late queen Elizabeth II before her death.

But in his latest broadside aimed at Starmer’s government, Trump told countries like Britain to secure the Strait of Hormuz themselves because “the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us”.

A YouGov poll published on Thursday found nearly half of British citizens opposed the visit to the US, with only a third saying it should go ahead.

Emily Thornberry, a senior MP in Starmer’s ruling Labour party, said earlier this month it would be “safer to delay” the visit.

She warned Charles and Camilla could be left feeling “embarrassed” because of the ongoing conflict.

“Why are we rewarding Donald Trump with a state visit from our king?” asked Ed Davey, leader of the minority opposition Liberal Democrats party.

The last British monarch to make a state visit to the US was Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.

That visit was the last of four made by the late queen whose visit in 1991 included an address to Congress.

The royal family’s soft power diplomacy is viewed as an important way of engaging with Trump, who is well known for his admiration for the monarchy.

Charles helped smooth Starmer’s visit to the White House last year by signing a letter inviting Trump to visit the UK which the prime minister handed to the president on a visit to the Oval Office.

In front of the TV cameras a beaming US president read the invitation for an unprecedented second state visit and said it would be an “honour” to accept, declaring the king “a beautiful man, a wonderful man”.