The fate of the Chagos Islands hinges on U.S. support for a sovereignty transfer from Britain to Mauritius LONDON -- The fate of the Chagos Islands is in the hands of one man almost half a world away. The contested Indian Ocean archipelago that is home to a strategically important U.K.-U.S. military base has been in limbo since U.S. President Donald Trump in January criticized a deal by the U.K. government to transfer sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius.
Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said Wednesday that officials are reviewing the pact after Trump renewed his criticism of the U.K.-Mauritius agreement, calling it a “terrible deal,” during his first meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham in New York. Streeting said they “can’t go ahead without American support.” It's not clear what it will take to win back U.S. approval, though. The Trump administration had previously welcomed the agreement as a way to ensure the security of the joint military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the island chain.
Here’s what to know about the disputed islands. The United States has described Diego Garcia as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa. Home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel, it has supported U.S. military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2008, the U.S. acknowledged that it also had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects. In March, the U.K. government condemned Iran for “reckless attacks” when it launched missiles in an unsuccessful attempt to hit the base, which is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Tehran. The U.K. had initially refused to let the base be used for U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, but after Iran lashed out at its neighbors, the U.K. said that American bombers could use Diego Garcia and another British base to attack Iran’s missile sites, but only for “specific and limited defensive operations.” The U.S. deployed several nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit bombers to Diego Garcia last year amid an intense airstrike campaign targeting Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India, south of the Maldives, has been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The U.K. split the Chagos Islands away from Mauritius, a former British colony, in 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence, and called the Chagos archipelago the British Indian Ocean Territory. In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.K. evicted as many as 2,000 people from the islands so the U.S. military could build the Diego Garcia base.
In recent years, criticism grew over Britain’s control of the archipelago and the way it forcibly displaced the local population. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have both urged the U.K. to end its “colonial administration” of the islands and transfer sovereignty to Mauritius. Negotiations on handing the islands to Mauritius began in 2022 under the United Kingdom’s previous Conservative government and resumed after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was elected in 2024.
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