A single island in the Indian Ocean is causing a nightmare for government officials on both sides of the Atlantic.
President Donald Trump reversed his position on the United Kingdom’s plan to cede Chagos Islands sovereignty to the country of Mauritius following what he called “very productive discussions” with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump said on Thursday that he now understands the U.K. leader’s deal is “the best he could make,” despite having previously called the move “an act of great stupidity.” However, he warned that if the planned handover ever compromises U.S. military operations, he will not hesitate to act in America’s interests.
“If the lease deal, sometime in the future, ever falls apart, or anyone threatens or endangers U.S. operations and forces at our Base, I retain the right to Militarily secure and reinforce the American presence in Diego Garcia,” Trump wrote.
A spokeswoman for 10 Downing Street affirmed that Trump and Starmer “agreed on the importance of the deal to secure the joint UK–US base on Diego Garcia, which remains vital to shared security interests.”
Bizarrely, a vote on the bill to hand over the islands was pulled from the parliamentary calendar not long before Trump made his Truth Social post — delaying it until Feb. 23 at the earliest.
The Chagos Islands are an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that became a British territory in 1814, along with neighboring Mauritius. They were split from Mauritius in 1965, ahead of Mauritius’s declaration of independence from Britain in 1968.
The largest island in the Chagos archipelago, Diego Garcia, is home to a joint base operated by the United States and the U.K. — a development that forced thousands of Chagossians to be relocated to Mauritius and the U.K.
Mauritius has been litigating the U.K. over the situation for decades, eventually taking the case to the International Court of Justice in 2018.
Since then, the British government has worked tirelessly to carve out a deal that satisfies Mauritius without losing its defensive foothold. The current deal framework would cede sovereignty but lease the Diego Garcia base for 99 years, ban other nations from utilizing nearby islands without British consent, and open the door to negotiations prolonging the arrangement in 40-year intervals.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sharply criticized the deal on Thursday, calling it “one of the dumbest geostrategic mistakes that the UK could possibly make” because the islands could fall under Chinese influence.
“It will give the Chinese Communist Party a foothold in a critical region and compromise the ability of the US, UK and Nato forces overall to project power,” he added.
While sovereignty over an Indian Ocean island that is unpopulated save for a military base might not seem like a society-shaping issue, it has already divided British politics enough to push some members of parliament to change affiliation.
Andrew Rosindell is the former chairman of the British Indian Ocean Territory All-Party Parliamentary Group, the government body that has for years been tasked with bringing about a resolution on the issue.
He told the Washington Examiner that the various parties involved in the committee during his tenure had many different viewpoints but agreed on the “fundamental point that the resettlement of the Chagossian people to their ancestral homeland must be the priority.”
“Views within the group varied widely, from Jeremy Corbyn, who supported Mauritius’s claim over the Chagos Islands, to myself, who has always vehemently opposed that claim and supported continued British sovereignty,” Rosindell explained. “What united us was the belief that the ultimate decision over sovereignty should rest with the Chagossian people themselves, whether they chose Mauritius, Britain, or independence.”
Rosindell recently flipped from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, citing the Conservatives’ posture on the Chagossian sovereignty question as the “red line” that was crossed and ultimately forced him to switch parties.
“Chagos became a decisive factor in my defection because, over the past year as a Shadow Foreign Office Minister, I was repeatedly told that granting self-determination to the Chagossian people was not party policy,” Rosindell told the Washington Examiner.
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Approximately 4,000 military personnel live on the island of Diego Garcia at the moment.
The deal to transfer ownership of the Chagos Islands is estimated to cost the U.K. just under $50 billion over the next century.
