After displeasing President Donald Trump by siding with Denmark against the idea of Greenland becoming a territory of the United States, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seems to have another difficult decision to make now. Will he allow the U.S. to use the Diego Garcia military base for strikes against Iran if and when it takes place?
On February 18, President Trump linked Diego Garcia to the US military buildup for a possible strike on Iran.
“Should Iran decide not to make a Deal,’ he said, ‘it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia… in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime”, he said.
Accordingly, Iran has formally protested to the United Nations, declaring that any use of Diego Garcia for an attack would make the base a “legitimate target” for its own military.
Since Diego Garcia is a UK territory as of today, the US needs London’s permission to use the military base in Diego Garcia against Iran, even though, and that is an irony, it is essentially manned and controlled by Washington.
Reportedly, Starmer is not inclined to grant such permission, citing concerns about international law.
This British hesitancy was said to be one of the reasons why the Trump Administration had kept Diego Garcia out of the operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities last year. It was under the impression that asking for permission would almost certainly have been denied by London.
Starmer does not seem to be as confident as Trump in disregarding international law. It is well known that, for Trump, national interests must prevail over international law.
For Starmer, it is all the more a tricky question, as he is in the process of fulfilling his commitment to Mauritius over the “Sovereignty Transfer” of Diego Garcia while securing the continued operation of the military base there.
Incidentally, when “the Diego Garcia deal” was signed on May 22, 2025, between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, the White House welcomed it and called it Starmer’s “monumental achievement” for securing the future of the military base in Diego Garcia.
But Trump has now changed his opinion on the same deal. In a post on Truth Social on January 20, he lacerated Britain’s decision to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands that include Diego Garcia. “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,” he wrote.
In fact, justifying why the US needed Greenland as a reliable base, Trump added, “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
On February 18, he repeated his criticism of the deal, this time in the context of its possible use for his planned strikes against Iran.
EurAsian Times had once explained that Diego Garcia, the core atoll of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), has been leased to the US since 1965 as a military base, where the US maintains its most important overseas assets in the Indian Ocean. The UK also shares these military facilities.
It may be noted that in the early 1960s, Washington had started talks with London about the establishment of a shared defense facility on Diego Garcia, the island chain that was a part of the Chagos Archipelago (55 atoll islands), which, in turn, was surrendered by the Government of Mauritius on payment of compensation, together with three islands formerly part of Seychelles.
It was then called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). After making the territory available for joint defense purposes of both the UK and the US in 1966, London removed the local population from the island between 1968 and 1973, deporting some to Mauritius, which had become independent in 1968, and the rest to London (Sussex).
Mauritius never accepted Diego Garcia as British territory and claimed it as its own. But the UK has ensured that none of the deported people return to the BIOT.
In June 2017, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution tabled by Mauritius seeking an “advisory opinion” from the ICJ (International Court of Justice) in The Hague on the legal status of the Chagos Archipelago.
On February 25, 2019, the ICJ published “the Advisory Opinion” on the matter: “The Court having found that the decolonization of Mauritius was not conducted in a manner consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination, it follows that the United Kingdom’s continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago constitutes a wrongful act entailing the international responsibility of that State…
“Accordingly, the United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible, thereby enabling Mauritius to complete the decolonization of its territory in a manner consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination.”
This advisory opinion was subsequently voted upon in the UN General Assembly, which, on May 22, 2019, by an unprecedented majority of 116 to 6, with 56 countries abstaining, urged the UK to withdraw its “colonial administration” from the Chagos Archipelago unconditionally within six months and restore it to Mauritius.
Only six countries – the United States, the UK, Australia, Israel, and the Maldives – voted against the resolution. A total of 56, including leading European countries such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, abstained.
It was against this background that the Labour government led by Starmer and Mauritius had negotiated the May 2025 deal, whose main features were:
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After granting sovereignty to Mauritius, the UK will lease the island of Diego Garcia from Mauritius for an initial 99-year period to maintain the joint UK-US military base. This lease can be renewed for an additional 40 years.
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The UK will pay Mauritius an average of £101 million ($136 million) per year for the duration of the 99-year lease. The total value of the deal is estimated at roughly £3.4 billion.
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Native Chagossians, who were forcibly removed in the 1960s and 70s, will be permitted to resettle on any of the Chagos islands except Diego Garcia, which remains restricted for military use.
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There will be a 24-nautical-mile “exclusion zone” around Diego Garcia and a strict ban on foreign security forces from other nations on the outer islands.
This deal, in the form of the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill, is currently undergoing ratification in the British Parliament. Though it completed its House of Lords stages in January 2026, it is now facing hurdles in the House of Commons.
Apart from the Trump factor (after all, the military base is operated by the US), there are growing demands within Britain to reconsider and negate the deal. So much so that the Starmer government now is said to have “paused for thought”.
Former UK Foreign Secretary and an important leader of the opposition Conservative party, William Hague’s Oped in the Times on February 24 best reflects the above growing sentiment.
There are two important arguments in Hague’s piece.
One, it is not a good deal.
“The payment by the British taxpayer of billions — or tens of billions — of pounds to lease back land that is currently ours is too much”. It is not an attractive mixture, as apparently, the total cost to the British taxpayer could reach £34.7 billion over the coming century.
Two, Hague questions how the government can hand over ‘a sovereign territory to another country, with no regard to the wishes of the previous inhabitants’.
This is an important question, as the Chagos Archipelago’s historical status as part of Mauritius is debatable. It is the common colonial master, the UK that had clubbed them together for administrative purposes in the past and its people do not want to be part of Mauritius, the same way people of the Falklands do not want to be part of Argentina (that this argument does not hold for the Brishers in general in the cases of people of Crimea and Doesnetisk who desire to remain with Russia, not Ukraine is a different matter).
Hague says that “the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, ruthlessly evicted by Britain by 1973 to make way for the US military base on Diego Garcia, had suffered a serious injustice. Many had gone to Mauritius and largely lived in poverty, while others had settled around Crawley in Sussex, with the result that MPs for that town have always been eloquent advocates of their cause.
“There are about 3,500 of the original Chagossians and their descendants living in the UK. A small group of them have landed on the islands in the past week to register their strong opposition to the treaty, as they feel no connection with Mauritius and that country would be under no duty to allow their return. All the evidence suggests that the vast majority of Chagossians in the UK oppose the treaty”.
Viewed thus, Hargue concludes that “Trump is right: the Chagos deal is a mistake. As foreign secretary, I would have been ashamed to back a treaty that disregards the islanders and fleeces the taxpayer. If any court judgment told us to hand over the Falklands or Gibraltar, we would reply that the self-determination of the inhabitants is the overriding consideration. In this case, of course, there are no inhabitants, and as a result, their right to self-determination has never been recognised by Britain. But the only reason they are not inhabitants is that we forcibly removed them from their homes. I do not think I could have brought myself to agree to a treaty that totally ignored their wishes”.
Interestingly, within these debates, there is also one school of thought that suggests that “Washington can midwife an independent Chagossian state by recognizing a Chagossian government-in-exile and negotiating directly with it over the islands’ future. Working with that government and ideally with the UK, the US should propose a binding referendum among Chagossians on three options for their future: i) association with Mauritius; ii) continued British sovereignty; or iii) a COFA with the U.S.”
It may be noted that the COFA (Compacts of Free Association) are international treaties between the United States and three Pacific island nations: the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau. These agreements establish a partnership in which the US provides financial assistance, defense, and eligibility for certain federal services in exchange for exclusive military access and strategic control of the region, which are crucial to Indo-Pacific security.
Of these options, the U.S./Chagossian COFA is by far the best, says Kevin R. James, an economist in the Systemic Risk Centre at the London School of Economics. “ A U.S./Chagossian COFA would enable the Chagossians to build a prosperous and independent future while putting the critical U.S. base at Diego Garcia on a secure and stable legal footing”.
Be that as it may, one thing is now pretty obvious: the U.S. needs the Diego Garcia military base under its complete control, whether the UK wants it or not.
All told, the base has served as an anchor for American operations.
It was a critical, high-volume launchpad for US air operations in the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War. And in the early 2000’s, the base provided support for US airstrikes in Afghanistan, targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. In 2024 and 2025, the US used the base to launch operations against the Houthis in Yemen.
After all, the base at Diego Garcia has an extensive airfield with runways long enough to accommodate large military aircraft, including B-2 and B-52 bombers, KC-135 tankers, reconnaissance aircraft, and transport planes. It also has major fuel storage facilities, radar installations, and control towers that can support regional military operations.
It also hosts a deep-water port that can dock, resupply, and provide maintenance to large naval vessels, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines. There are multiple piers and docks equipped with modern systems to support rapid response operations.
Considering all this, the future of Diego Garcia has implications not only for Mauritius’ eventual sovereignty but also for the health of US-UK relations.
Will Starmer reconsider last year’s deal under Trump’s pressure? Time will tell.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
