Writing for the Daily Mail in 2023, Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sardonically argued, “The Americans don't give us crucial nuclear secrets because they love little old England. They don’t share intelligence because they adore our quaint accents. We have a great and indispensable relationship because we have important things to offer – including Diego Garcia.”
In March, during the ongoing war, Iran launched two missiles at Diego Garcia, which houses a joint UK-American base in the Indian Ocean. While both missiles missed their target, the attack provided the first operational demonstration of Iran’s intermediate-range ballistic missile capability. It also offered a reminder that security in the Indian Ocean is inextricably linked with the larger Middle East. Or, as a senior American naval official put it decades earlier, the Indian Ocean was the “backdoor” to the Middle East and Russia and China’s “soft underbelly.”
To understand why Iran targeted an island 2,500 miles from its shores, turn to Samuel Bashfield’s new and well-drawn history of the U.S. and U.K.’s Cold War adventures in the Indian Ocean, entitled simply “The British Indian Ocean Territory.” As Bashfield effectively demonstrates, the island is central to America’s maritime posture in the Indian Ocean. It has been so since the Second World War.
Today, Diego Garcia is crucial for naval logistics, air power facilitation, military supply prepositioning, and intelligence gathering. It is also a key node for operations across the Indian Ocean, Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. In Bashfield’s words, it is “a coveted lily pad.” For Washington’s strategy, Diego Garcia is to the Indian Ocean as Guam is to the Pacific.
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