Buckingham Palace is continuing its plans for King Charles to visit the United States despite the crisis in the Middle East and ongoing tensions between President Donald Trump and British prime minister Keir Starmer.
According to CNN, during a bilateral Oval Office meeting with Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin on Tuesday, Trump said that King Charles would be visiting “very shortly.”
Palace sources tell Vanity Fair that plans are ongoing for the state visit, which is due to take place at the end of April. “There is no current deviation from the planning and prep that has been underway,” a palace source says, noting that all state visits are subject to government advice.
There are, however, a number of factors that could affect the trip’s being given the greenlight—chiefly, the conflict in Iran and increased tension between the US and the United Kingdom over the situation in the Middle East.
Trump has been outright in his criticism of Starmer over Britain’s resistance to lending support to the operation in Iran. But despite Trump’s public attacks on Starmer, during a news conference at the White House on Monday, he referred to King Charles as “a great guy,” telling reporters, “He’s coming in very soon.”
Sources close to King Charles say that the monarch is looking forward to the visit, which has a “very busy” schedule. “It’s full steam ahead with the planning,” another source says. “All the recces have been done. Any pullback will not be at the royal household’s request. If the visit is pulled, it will be by the British government, and that is considered highly unlikely.”
King Charles’s schedule is expected to include visits to Washington, DC, and New York to commemorate 250 years of American independence. At one point the idea of the king meeting up with Prince Harry was being discussed. According to sources close to King Charles, he was “open to the idea” of seeing Prince Harry, possibly during the New York leg of the tour. However, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have since announced that they will be on a tour of Australia during April, making it unlikely that they’ll be in America while the king is there.
Though King Charles and Queen Camilla remain hopeful that the visit to the US will go ahead, several lawmakers have suggested it could be best for the trip to be postponed. “If it was to go ahead, it would go ahead against a backdrop of a war, and that, I think, is quite difficult—and the last thing that we want to do is to have Their Majesties embarrassed,” MP Dame Emily Thornberry told BBC Radio 4’s Today show.
