Trump Forces UK to Halt Island Chagos Island Transfer

June 2026
By Libby Flatoff

The United Kingdom has halted a deal to cede the disputed Chagos Islands archipelago to Mauritius after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his support.

The largest island in the archipelago, Diego Garcia, contains a shared U.S.-UK military base. Under the deal, signed May 22, 2025, the UK would have paid Mauritius an average of $136 million per year to lease back this island for the UK and the United States to operate the naval and bomber base for at least 99 years. (See ACT, Jan/Feb 2025.)

The deal required U.S. support because the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, signed between Westminster and Washington in 1996, needed to be amended to allow the transfer of the islands. Many U.S. Republicans were against the treaty change and the deal due to Mauritius’s proximity and friendliness toward China.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) stated in a March 13 press release, “When two countries shake hands on a treaty, one of them can’t start changing the terms without the other country agreeing to it. That’s just common sense. That’s why I take issue with the United Kingdom trying to give our joint military base on Diego Garcia to a pal of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s—all without getting the U.S. Senate’s consent.”

He said he introduced a bill that “would make sure that our friends in the U.K. don’t modify our treaty and hand this gift to China without giving the Senate a say.”

Although Trump and his administration initially favored the deal, he wrote in a Jan. 20 social media post that the UK decision to give away Diego Garcia was “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another [reason] in very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”

At the time, he was pushing hard to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory within Denmark that has refused Trump’s demands.

Trump even went so far as to call on Denmark and other European Allies to “DO THE RIGHT THING,” and stop the UK from following through on the Chagos deal.

By Feb. 5, he seemed to walk back the criticism and once again showed reluctant support for the deal in a social media post, writing that “I understand that the deal [UK] Prime Minister [Keir] Starmer has made, according to many, the best he could make.”

But later that month Trump changed his reason for disliking the deal, and in a Feb. 18 social media post, wrote, “that Leases are no good when it comes to Countries, and that [Starmer] is making a big mistake by entering a 100 Year Lease.… they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!”

Ten days before the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, Trump made another social media post Feb. 18, stating that “it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford [England], in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime.”

The Guardian reported that without U.S. support, the UK Parliament was forced to shelve the bill as time ran out in the parliamentary session.

Upon hearing that the deal had been indefinitely paused, Mauritian Foreign Minister Dhananjay Ramful said, “We will spare no effort to seize any diplomatic or legal avenue to complete the decolonization process,” according to The Guardian. “This is a matter of justice.” The fate of the deal is unclear.