President Donald Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on February 18, ahead of potential U.S. military action against Iran. Trump warned Starmer to rescind the United Kingdom’s forfeiture of sovereignty of Diego Garcia.
“I have been telling Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the United Kingdom, that Leases are no good when it comes to Countries, and that he is making a big mistake by entering a 100 Year Lease with whoever it is that is ‘claiming’ Right, Title, and Interest to Diego Garcia, strategically located in the Indian Ocean,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
As decolonization loomed across the British Empire, the United Kingdom administratively separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, the Indian Ocean island from which British authorities administered the sparsely populated islands 1,250 miles away. London rebranded the archipelago as the British Indian Ocean Territory and evicted the approximately 2,000 Chagossians who called the islands home.
Diego Garcia, the crown of the Chagos Island chain, became home to a naval facility and airfield that quickly became an important Cold War hub for long-range bombers. Today, the U.S. base is home to approximately 1,500 military staff and an equal number of contractors and support staff.
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