The US president warned the military base on Diego Garcia may be needed to respond to possible attack from Iran.<\/p>\n
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Published On 18 Feb 202618 Feb 2026<\/p>\n
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Donald Trump has criticised the United Kingdom\u2019s plan to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a day after the United States Department of State gave its official approval of the deal.<\/p>\n
The US president said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer was \u201cmaking a big mistake\u201d in the agreement to return sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius, and lease back the island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a UK-US military base.<\/p>\n
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He warned in a Truth Social post that Starmer was \u201closing control of this important Island by claims of entities never known of before\u201d, adding: \u201cIn our opinion, they are fictitious in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Indian Ocean archipelago became part of British territory in 1814, with the UK detaching it from Mauritius before it gained independence in the 1960s. It then worked with the US to force the islands\u2019 residents to leave, in order to build a military base on Diego Garcia, which it had leased to the US.<\/p>\n
Mauritius won its legal battle for sovereignty over the islands in 2019, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) urged the UK to cede control. This was followed by a UN resolution giving the UK six months to hand the islands back.<\/p>\n
The UK will maintain a 99-year lease of Diego Garcia with an option to extend, which will cost around 100 million pounds ($135m) a year.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the UK\u2019s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Wednesday that the deal was \u201ccrucial to the security of the UK and our key allies, and to keeping the British people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agreement we have reached is the only way to guarantee the long-term future of this vital military base,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Trump had criticised the agreement in January, but after speaking with Starmer earlier in February, the US leader said the British prime minister had made \u201cthe best deal he could\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his Truth Social post on Wednesday, the president went on to warn that \u201cit may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford in order to eradicate a potential attack\u201d from Iran, should it decide against making a deal with the US. He added that this attack \u201cwould potentially be made\u201d on the UK and other friendly countries.<\/p>\n
Describing the lease as tenuous, he said that the UK must \u201cremain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chagossians, who were sent to Mauritius and the Seychelles, with many settling in the UK, have been fighting to return to the islands for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US president warned the military base on Diego Garcia may be needed to respond to possible attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3995,1076,3,1049,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-476934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-asia","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}