President Trump previously signaled support for Starmer’s Chagos deal, although he called it a “very stupid thing”.
Published February 5, 2026
US President Donald Trump appears to have endorsed a deal struck by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, weeks after calling it “terrible folly”.
President Trump last month described Britain’s decision to cede sovereignty over Indian Ocean islands, including the joint US-UK military base on Diego Garcia, as “an act of extreme stupidity”.
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The US president had a productive meeting with Mr Starmer on Thursday and said the British leader had struck “the best possible deal”.
But he also warned in a post on Truth Social that the United States reserves the right to “militarily secure and strengthen” its presence on Diego Garcia if it is threatened.
“The leaders agreed that the two governments will continue to work closely together to ensure the continued operation of the base and will consult again soon,” the British government said in a statement, AFP reported.
Under the agreement reached in May last year, the British and Mauritian governments jointly announced that full sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago, a remote group of more than 60 islands, would once again vest in Mauritius, and in return ensure that US military bases would continue to operate there for the next 99 years.
Last year’s announcement sparked mixed emotions among Chagossians who were forced from their island homeland in the 1960s and 1970s and resettled in Mauritius, Seychelles and Britain. They have been campaigning for decades to return freely to their ancestral lands without any restrictions.
The Chagos Islands have been under British rule since 1814. In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain forcibly evicted around 2,000 locals to make way for US military bases that played a vital role in US military operations in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the United States also admitted that the base was used for secret transfer flights of “terrorism” suspects.
