Iran war: Trump mocked Starmer and Royal Navy’s ‘old’ warships. But the reality is far different

US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made harsh criticisms of the UK’s maritime capabilities; These words undoubtedly resonated in a country with a deep-rooted maritime heritage.

Although sharp, his observations are not entirely unfounded.

The existing friction between Washington and London intensified further following the outbreak of the Iran war on February 28, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially denied the US military access to British bases.

Although this decision was later partially reversed, allowing the United States to use facilities such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for “defensive purposes,” President Trump remains adamant that he is disappointed.

He has repeatedly criticized Starmer and described the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as mere “toys”.

In the comments posted by the Daily Telegraph On Wednesday, Mr Trump said: “You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and you had aircraft carriers that weren’t working.”

Mr Hegseth, meanwhile, made the sarcastic suggestion that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should take responsibility for securing commercial shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.

While it is true that the Royal Navy no longer has the global dominance it once did, it is a far cry from the “weak” power that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth allude to. Its capabilities were broadly comparable to those of the French navy with which it was often compared.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth about the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been for hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, the journal’s editor. Journal of the Royal United Services Institute.

“On the positive side, the Royal Navy can say it has entered its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships being built than in decades.”

Skills and preparation

It wasn’t so long ago that Britain was able to assemble a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail into the south Atlantic following Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands.

The 1982 operation, which then US President Ronald Reagan remained indifferent, was the final turning point in Britain’s maritime lineage.

Nothing can be achieved on this scale, even remotely, anymore. Since the Second World War, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has been significantly reduced; Much of this was linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of the empire. But not all.

The number of warships, including aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, in the Royal Navy fleet has fallen by two-thirds from 466 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to an Associated Press analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Although the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its disposal, it had no aircraft carriers for a seven-year period in the 2010s.

While the frigate fleet decreased from 60 to 11, the number of destroyers was halved to six.

decreased status

The Royal Navy has come under criticism for the time it took to send the destroyer HMS Dragon to the Middle East after the war with Iran began.

For many it symbolized how depleted the British military had been since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, although naval officials worked around the clock to shape the ship for a different mission than the one it had been prepared for.

For most of the Cold War, Britain spent between 4 percent and 8 percent of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, this rate fell to a low of 1.9 percent of GDP in 2018, adding fuel to Trump’s fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labor governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defense to other priorities such as health and education.

Austerity measures introduced by the Conservative Party-led government following the 2008-9 global financial crisis prevented any increase in defense spending, despite clear signs of Russia’s resurgence, particularly after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

No quick fix

Following Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the start of a new Middle East war, there is a growing sense that disruptions to the political divide have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives began reversing military spending. Since Labor returns to power in 2024, Sir Keir has sought to increase British defense spending, partly at the expense of cutting the country’s long-vaunted aid spending.

The Prime Minister has pledged to increase Britain’s defense spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated target is now for that spending to rise to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 as part of the NATO deal put forward by Mr Trump.

This will mean, quite frankly, tens of billions of pounds more spent, meaning much more supplies for the armed forces.

There is pressure on the government to accelerate this programme. But with public finances further jeopardized by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it is unclear where the additional money will come from.

RUSI’s Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy, said the fights were likely to keep coming, although the criticism was unfair and far from the truth.

“We are faced with an administration that does not exercise tact,” he said.