Under the terms of the deal, the UK–U.S. naval and bomber base on Diego Garcia would remain under UK control for at least 99 years.
President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 criticised the UK’s decision to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, calling the move an “act of total weakness” and linking it to broader U.S. national security concerns.
Trump made the comments in a post on his Truth Social platform, where he condemned the UK’s handling of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago and home to a major U.S.–UK military base.
He said the decision exposed Western weakness to strategic rivals and cited it as further justification for his long-standing push to acquire Greenland.
“Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” Trump wrote.
He added that “China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness,” saying they “only recognize STRENGTH.”
Trump said Britain’s actions amounted to “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY” and described them as “another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
Britain agreed in May to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius after decades of legal and diplomatic pressure. The agreement, signed in October 2025, followed years of negotiations and was finalised after consultations with Washington, according to the UK government.
Under the terms of the deal, the British–U.S. naval and bomber base on Diego Garcia would remain under UK control for at least 99 years, ensuring continued access for U.S. forces. The base is regarded by the United States as a critical hub for operations across the Middle East, East Africa, and the Indo-Pacific.
The British Labour government has said the agreement was necessary to safeguard the long-term operation of the base, after a series of international court rulings weakened Britain’s legal position.
In May last year, the Trump administration said the deal “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-UK military facility at Diego Garcia.”
That endorsement came despite earlier concerns expressed by senior Republicans. In October 2024, Marco Rubio, then the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, warned the agreement could undermine U.S. security interests.
Rubio said in an October 2024 interview with Politico that the deal posed a “serious threat” to U.S. national security by transferring the islands to a country aligned with China.
Following Trump’s comments, a UK government spokesman said Britain would not compromise on national security and that the deal was designed to preserve, not weaken, military operations.
“We acted because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future,” the spokesman said.
“This deal secures the operations of the joint U.S.-UK base on Diego Garcia for generations, with robust provisions for keeping its unique capabilities intact and our adversaries out.”
The spokesman also said the agreement had been publicly welcomed by the United States, Australia, and the other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, as well as by partners, including India, Japan and South Korea.
UK Lawmakers React
UK lawmakers have been debating legislation to implement the Chagos agreement since last summer. The Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill is now in the final stages of parliamentary consideration and is expected to return to the House of Commons for a final vote.
Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel welcomed Trump’s intervention in a Jan. 20 post on X.
“President Trump has said what we’ve said all along—Labour’s £35 billion ($47.1 billion) Chagos Surrender is a bad deal for Britain and bad for our national security,” Patel wrote.
She said the Conservatives had opposed the deal “from day one” and called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to abandon it.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also praised Trump’s comments in two Jan. 20 posts on X.
“Thank goodness Trump has vetoed the surrender of the Chagos islands,” Farage said in one post.
In a separate post, Farage said U.S. officials had been misled about Britain’s legal position.
“The Americans have woken up to the fact that they were lied to,” he wrote.
Mauritius, which gained independence from Britain in 1968, has long argued that the Chagos Islands were unlawfully separated from its territory before independence. The dispute gained momentum in 2019, when the United Nations’ highest court ruled in an advisory opinion that Britain’s administration of the islands was unlawful.
Between 1968 and 1973, Britain forcibly removed between 1,400 and 1,700 Chagossians to make way for the Diego Garcia base. Many were resettled in Mauritius and the Seychelles, and some later moved to the UK. British law has barred their return without official permission.
The UK has apologised for the removals and made three compensation payments, the most recent in 2016. Many Chagossians say they have been excluded from decisions about their homeland and are demanding a greater role in shaping its future.
