Argentine President Javier Milei has announced plans to sanction oil companies working near the Falkland Islands, escalating a long-running dispute with Britain days after President Donald Trump said the US position on the archipelago was “under review.”
In an address late Thursday, Milei reasserted Argentina’s claim to the islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, which the United Kingdom has controlled since 1833 and over which the two countries fought a war in the early 1980s.
“The Falkland Islands are Argentinian, historically and legally. There is no debate,” Milei said, adding that “winds of change” had become more favorable to Argentina’s claim.
The right-wing libertarian leader’s comments came after Trump suggested earlier this week that Washington could review its long-held position of maintaining strategic ambiguity on the question of the territory’s sovereignty, while accepting de facto British rule.
Milei described an oilfield project off the coast of the Falklands, involving Israeli and British firms, as a “concrete and urgent danger” that is advancing toward oil extraction without Argentina’s permission.
